Bernard Looney, the former chief executive of BP who stepped down suddenly last year, has met industry players in the United Arab Emirates over potential comeback projects.
Looney, 53, has held talks with Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, head of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), and with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser, according to the Financial Times.
The discussions are said to have included whether the former BP boss could play a role in state-backed investments, although not over a position within Adnoc.
A spokesman for Adnoc said that it had “not held any discussions” with Looney, but did not comment on whether discussions had taken place with Jaber, who is also the UAE’s minister of industry and chairman of Masdar, the Gulf state’s biggest renewable energy company.
Looney declined to comment.
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The industry veteran resigned as chief executive of BP last September after the FTSE 100 company’s board found he had not been “fully transparent” with them about his workplace relationships. He had told the company about a “small number of historical relationships with colleagues”, which the board initially was satisfied with.
However, more allegations were made about Looney’s relationships with other co-workers, which prompted BP to open another investigation into his behaviour. The company found that “he did not provide details of all relationships and accepts he was obligated to make more complete disclosure”. He subsequently was stripped of up to £32.4 million in pay and bonuses because of the “serious misconduct”, having been found to have “knowingly misled the board”.
Looney has not spoken publicly since his resignation, beyond a statement that he was “disappointed with the way the situation has been handled”.
He came to the defence of Jaber last year when the UAE was criticised by environmentalists for appointing the head of its state oil company as president of the Cop28 talks. Looney wrote in the FT in June that year that “if people want a truly transformative Cop28, let’s get behind a country of action on climate change”.
BP and Adnoc have worked together for 50 years through joint ventures. They include establishing a new gas exploration partnership in Egypt, while Adnoc has taken a 25 per cent stake in BP’s project to develop so-called blue hydrogen production on Teesside.
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In April Adnoc was reported to have considered recently making a takeover offer for BP, as well as other options such as acquiring a stake, but it did not progress beyond preliminary discussions.
Shares in BP fell by 7½p, or 1.6 per cent, to 474¾p.
