Update5 Aug 2025 23:50
BP will launch a fresh review of its business and costs, and now expects to cut at least 15 per cent of its office staff, just months after its last strategic overhaul was met with a tepid response from investors.
“BP can and will do better for its investors,” said Murray Auchincloss, the UK oil major’s chief executive, who added that he would “conduct a thorough review” of BP’s businesses with the company’s incoming chair Albert Manifold. “We are also initiating a further cost review,” he added.
BP said on Tuesday that 6,200 out of its 40,000 office staff would be cut this year and there would be “material incremental savings” on payroll from the first quarter of next year. Previously, BP had said it would cut 4,700 jobs this year. It has a total workforce of about 100,000.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Auchincloss said Manifold, the former head of Irish building materials company CRH who is due to start in September, was “hardcore focused on returns, value and efficiency”.
He said the fresh review of BP’s businesses was because of “all the successes” that it has recently had in discovering new oil and gasfields, culminating in its biggest find in 25 years in Brazil.
“You just never plan on this amount of success so we need to think about resource allocation,” said Auchincloss.
The new review comes after BP announced a “fundamental reset” of its strategy in February, which cut its spending on clean energy, increased its oil production and promised $4bn to $5bn of cost reductions against a 2023 baseline. The group also pledged to raise $20bn from asset sales.
That announcement failed to win over investors, and BP’s shares are still 10 per cent lower than they were in February.
Activist investor Elliott Management, which has built a 5 per cent stake, has called for more radical action, including a further $5bn of cost cuts on top of BP’s plan.
BP said on Tuesday it had cut $1.7bn so far, and sold $3bn of assets, and Auchincloss said he wanted the company to be “best in sector” on costs by 2027.
The announcement was made alongside second-quarter results. BP reported adjusted profits of $2.4bn for the period, a third higher than analysts expected, and raised its quarterly dividend by 4 per cent. The company maintained a $750mn quarterly share buyback.
BP’s shares rose 2.6 per cent on Tuesday and are now up by about a quarter from their 2025 low in April, compared with a 15 per cent increase for rival Shell.
Auchincloss said the company had a strong quarter “operationally and strategically” desp
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