BP turns to the continuity candidate

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As a former chief of staff to ex-BP head Bob Dudley, Murray Auchincloss is familiar with the pressures of running a company that over the past 15 years has rarely been out of the spotlight.

The stint as a top lieutenant to Dudley is one of many Auchincloss has had in a more than two-decade career at BP, which the 53-year-old joined when the UK oil major merged with US-based Amoco in 1998.

The Canadian had been running BP on an interim basis since the sudden exit of Bernard Looney in September for failing to disclose past relationships with company colleagues.

The decision by BP chair Helge Lund and the board to hand Auchincloss the job on a permanent basis maintains the company’s tradition of never picking an outsider for the top job.

It also signals that BP will persist with a strategy, conceived and executed by Looney, of shifting into greener energy even as oil prices remain high.

In one of his few public appearances as interim chief, Auchincloss declared to shareholders at an investor day in Denver in October: “Strategy, financial frame and net zero ambition are unchanged.”

Paul Cheng, an analyst at Scotiabank, said the elevation of Auchincloss, who was BP’s chief financial officer from July 2020 to September 2023, was an “obvious move”.

“Any outside appointment would have taken six to nine months to get to know people in the company and get their feet wet,” he said.

The fourth generation of his family to work in the energy industry, Auchincloss began his career at Amoco in 1992 after graduating with a finance degree from the University of Calgary.

He qualified as a chartered financial analyst at West Virginia University and worked his way up the Amoco ranks as a tax analyst before relocating to London following the BP merger.

Stints in Texas and Scotland as finance chief for the company’s North America gas and North Sea…