It is no job for the faint-hearted but, then, Bob Dudley is no shrinking violet. The new chief of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill response is a seasoned American oil executive who has been at the centre of controversy before.
Until 2008, the 54-year-old, who was raised in Mississippi — one of the states directly affected by the spill — had spent five years running TNK-BP, BP’s Russian joint venture.
When a dispute blew up between the oil company and its partners, a group of uncompromising Soviet Union-born oligarchs, Mr Dudley was forced to flee Russia and BP had to cede management control to its partners.
“I became a lightning rod between BP and the Russian owners,” he told an American newspaper this week. “You learn in that kind of fast-paced, unpredictable environment to stay calm, get organised quickly and make sure you can communicate across an organisation so everyone knows the direction and remains committed.”
After his subsequent appointment to the board of BP, he was praised for his cool handling of the crisis and for his operational achievements with TNK-BP, which remains highly profitable.
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It was an experience that is likely to prove valuable in the weeks ahead as BP faces up to the fierce criticism and spiralling costs for its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Mr Dudley’s appointment as head of BP’s new Gulf Coast Restoration Organisation, a standalone unit of BP, comes as Tony Hayward, BP’s British chief executive, retreats from the frontline of dealing with the crisis, after a string of gaffes that have raised questions about his continuing leadership of the company.
Born in New York to a naval officer and raised in the South, Mr Dudley, who has been tipped as a potential successor to Mr Hayward, is softspoken and far less likely to rile a hostile American public.
Indeed, he has a common touch and a human response to the disaster that Mr Hayward seemed unable to summon. “My best childhood memories are when my father took the family out to Ship Island and a big treat was to go all the way out to the Chandeleurs,” Mr Dudley said this month at a press conference in Louisiana.
In another recent interview he said: “I know what it’s like to jump off and swim off a boat in the Gulf. I know what crabbing, shrimping and fishing is all about.”
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Former associates speak highly of Mr Dudley. “He’s an exceptional guy,” one said. “Exceptionally talented and he carries his humility into his leadership.”
He had already been closely involved in the operation to stem the leak but from the start of his new role, he has taken a different approach, spending his first days at the helm of the 1,000-strong recovery organisation in Washington, trying to repair fragile relations with senior government officials there.
On Thursday morning he met Ken Salazar, the Interior Secretary; Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate adviser, to determine the company’s plans to restore the Gulf Coast. It is a change of style that many believe could land him the top job at BP if he plays his hand well.
CV
Born 1955 in Queens, New York; grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
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Education BA in chemical engineering, University of Illinois; MIM, Thunderbird School of Global Management; MBA, Southern Methodist University
Career
1979 Joins Amoco and has several roles around the world, including stints in Britain and Russia
1994-97 Works for Amoco in Moscow, becoming general manager for strategy
1998 Joins BP when it buys Amoco; runs exploration and production in Angola, Egypt and the Caspian
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2003-08 President and chief executive of TNK-BP
2009 Appointed director of BP; given oversight of activities in the Americas and Asia
June 18, 2010 Named BP’s executive in charge of the Gulf Coast Restoration Organisation, which is the responding to the Gulf oil spill
Family Married, two children