BP’s next CEO Meg O’Neill to make history as first woman to lead an oil major

By Helen Clark

PERTH, Dec 18 (Reuters) – Energy industry veteran Meg O’Neill, tapped by BP to lead a shake-up at the London-based oil major, made an immediate impact when she took the reins at Australia’s Woodside Energy, clinching a deal that doubled its production portfolio.

Woodside’s 2021 acquisition of BHP’s petroleum assets in a then-$28 billion merger bulked up the Perth-based company with an international footprint during a period of industry consolidation, making it a top-10 global energy independent and a gas powerhouse. Despite O’Neill’s history of acquisitions and investments for the company, Woodside’s shares have underperformed its bigger rivals in the last five years, however.

O’Neill – a 55-year-old American from Boulder, Colorado and the first openly gay woman to helm a FTSE 100 company – joined Woodside in 2018, having spent 23 years at U.S. major Exxon. She had led Woodside since 2021. 

BP announced on Wednesday that O’Neill will become CEO in April, making her its first CEO appointed from outside the company and the first woman to head any of the world’s top five oil majors.

‘COME UP AND SEE US’

Initially promoted as acting CEO in April 2021 before being named to the post permanently that August, she brought a new, more open approach to management at Woodside, making executive floors at its Mia Yellagonga headquarters building accessible to all staff.

Australian media at the time reported on an internal memo that said “come up and see us”.

“She is very accessible to staff, she had a low ego,” a former Woodside colleague said.

Another described the graduate of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an “engineer’s engineer.”

A regular speaker at global energy events, O’Neill built an increasingly high industry profile along with Woodside’s rising ambitions, which saw it invest in the $7.2 billion Trion oil development offshore Mexico and take a larger share of the North West Shelf gas project, once Australia’s largest.

Last year, O’Neill made a big bet on the boom in U.S. LNG exports, acquiring a company that Woodside is developing into the $17.5 billion Louisiana LNG project, part of a portfolio expansion heavily weighted to gas. 

“It was only a matter of time until Meg was poached by a major who can pay far more,” said MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic.

In November, O’Neill announced plans for Woodside to increase sales by 50% by 2032 to 300 million barrels of oil equivalent. Woodside has also been beefing up its global trading team in Singapore and poaching talent as it expands.

O’Neill has focused on buying barrels rather than exploring for them, telling multiple investor day audiences that Woodside would focus its drilling on brownfield work to tie into existing infrastructure, as opposed to launching projects from scratch.

Her appointment at BP could signal a fundamental overhaul for the energy firm, which follows three tumultuous years for the over century-old company. 

RED TAPE AND FRUSTRATION

Known as a straight-shooter, O’Neill has expressed frustration with red tape and environmental laws in Australia, where many projects need both state and then federal approval.

At Woodside’s capital markets day last month, she said the only thing holding up developing the large Browse gas fields as backfill for the ageing North West Shelf LNG facility was regulation, noting that it took seven years for final approvals to extend the project’s life by 40 years.

“If you like straight talk and clear expectations, she’s good to work with,” said an industry source who has attended meetings with O’Neill. “If you prefer a softer, consensus-led style, she will be very tough on you.”

O’Neill has walked back clean energy investments, with Woodside’s only major project still standing a clean ammonia development in Beaumont, Texas, an approach that has drawn criticism from climate activists.

At Woodside’s annual meeting in May, organisers tried to drown out the noise from activists by playing promotional videos about its projects and sponsorship of Australian rules football club the Fremantle Dockers.

“We have plenty more of these videos we can play,” O’Neill said.

Some investors have called Woodside’s plans to curb emissions insufficient, and the Climate Transition Action Plan O’Neill developed in 2024 was voted down by 58% of shareholders.

Last month, she said sentiment was changing.

“I think there’s greater recognition that as the world invests in, even the developed world invests in data centres and artificial intelligence, that that needs to be powered.”

(Reporting by Helen Clark in Perth; Additional reporting by Sarah McFarlane, Shadia Nasralla and Stephanie KellyEditing by Tony Munroe, Shri Navaratnam, Elaine Hardcastle)