Former BP chief executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday that Bernard Looney’s abrupt resignation last month came as a shock and denied having any prior knowledge of the latter’s past personal relationships with colleagues.
Dudley, who has worked at BP for 40 years and led the company as CEO for nearly a decade, said the British energy major would soon find a suitable successor and that Looney’s departure was unlikely to affect the company’s strategy. Looney succeeds Dudley, who will step down as BP’s CEO in 2020.
Looney resigned on Sept. 12 with immediate effect after less than four years on the job. He informed the company that he had not been “fully transparent in his previous disclosures” about relationships with colleagues before becoming CEO, BP said.
The Financial Times, quoting anonymous sources familiar with the situation, reported that Looney promoted women with undisclosed past affairs, adding that his relevant romances with BP employees occurred before his promotion to CEO.
“It’s a shock to the organization. It came out of nowhere, and I think the company has great assets, great people,” Dudley told at an oil and gas conference, the Abu Dhabi International Progressive Energy Congress, on Tuesday.