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By Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov
LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley's
decade at the helm of one of the world's biggest oil companies
almost didn't happen.
Dropped into the role in 2010 after the Gulf of Mexico oil
spill disaster, 11 rig workers had just died and the company's
finances were teetering.
Dudley had lived in Mississippi in his youth and spent his
holidays fishing on the Gulf. He was now put in charge of
cleaning up the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history
in those very waters.
As BP scrambled to contain a crisis that threatened to take
down a company after more than 100 years of operation, investors
were running scared. Its market valued halved in two months as
the scale of the disaster unfolded.
Dudley received an early morning phone call that marked what
would be the "worst moment", he told Reuters in an interview
last year.
"When I heard that our debt was untradable back in the
summer of 2010... To me that was a moment of the unthinkable was
possible."
The feared collapse of BP did not come, but the onslaught
did, with BP facing clean-up costs and lawsuits that would
eventually top a staggering $75 billion.
Dudley needed to sell oil and gas assets to find the money
and so the sell-off began, with BP eventually doing deals worth
over $60 billion, including selling prized assets such as its
Texas City refinery, Gulf of Mexico oilfields and Russian joint
venture.
He shrank BP, but the drastic diet left Dudley in charge of
a company fitter than some of rivals when the next challenge hit
in the form of 2014's collapse in oil prices.
The slide would roll into early 2016, with Brent crude oil
prices falling more than 70% to levels not seen since
2003 and companies reeling to cut costs.
EARLY YEARS
Born in New York, Dudley grew up in Mississippi and later
moved to Illinois where he attended university.
He entered the oil world in 1979 when joining U.S. firm
Amoco, where he held a number of roles including working in
Russia before BP took over the company in 1998 and retained his
services.
His Russian experience helped Dudley win the top job at BP's
Russian joint venture TNK-BP venture in 2003.
Five years later Dudley made global headlines as he fled
Russia fearing for his life after falling out with Russian
oligarchs who accused Dudley of favouritism towards BP
employees.
Dudley in turn accused the oligarchs of using the Kremlin
and other Russian authorities to help settle purely commercial
disputes.
Despite the clash, Dudley's composed managerial style would
again shine through as he later became one of the Kremlin's
closest Western business allies.
BP and the oligarchs would later sell TNK-BP to Russian oil
producer Rosneft for over $50 billion.
A quarter of BP's oil production now originates from Russia.
In March, Dudley helped organise a meeting between Russian
President Vladimir Putin and top UK businesses in a bid to
smooth relations damaged by the poisoning in Britain of former
double agent Sergei Skripal, for which Britain blames Russia.
"He has led BP in a very wise, calm way over the last
decade," BP Chairman Helge Lund told Reuters in an interview in
June.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Dudley oversaw not only BP's recovery from near collapse in
2010 but its rebound from the 2014 oil crisis.
But he leaves with one major unfinished task, namely, BP's
transition to greener energy and lower emissions.
Although BP has agreed to set targets to reduce some of its
carbon emissions and increase spending on renewables, critics
say under Dudley BP has done too little to reduce carbon
emissions and increase investment in renewable energy.
Instead, it has posted its fastest expansion in oil and gas
production in decades, rising some 20% since 2016.
"From the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
disaster to the climate emergency, Bob Dudley's tenure as BP's
boss has been a failure," said John Sauven, executive director
at Greenpeace UK.
"These valuable years should have been used to end the
expansion of fossil fuels."
Shareholders have also expressed criticism, rejecting his
pay package in 2016 and forcing BP to cut it by 40%.
Dudley, who turns 65 next September, will step down in
February to make way for successor Bernard Looney, BP's current
head of upstream operations.
(Reporting by Ron Bousso; editing by Jason Neely)
