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Photo Credit: The Economic Club of Washington, D.C./Joshua Roberts

Bernard Looney

Chief Executive Officer of bp | May 10, 2023

David Rubenstein interviewed Bernard Looney, Chief Executive Officer of bp on Wednesday, May 10, 2023.

In 2020, bp set out a net zero ambition and a new strategy to transform from an international oil company to an integrated energy company. Recently bp announced plans to invest an additional $16 billion into its strategy by 2030. This includes five transition growth engines: bioenergy, convenience, EV charging, hydrogen, renewables and power, as well as oil and gas systems.

With more than 67,000 employees in over 60 countries, bp has a larger presence in the U.S. than anywhere in the world. More than 13,000 employees work in the U.S., every major bp global business is active here, and the U.S. accounted for more than half of bp’s global investment in 2022.

Mr. Looney has spent his entire career at bp, joining as an engineer in 1991, and has held a number of operational and managerial positions, including in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, Vietnam and the UK North Sea. He is a steering committee member for the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, an FCLT Global board member and leads the Energy Transition Taskforce of the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

Mr. Looney is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Irish Academy of Engineering and the Energy Institute, and an Ambassador for 25 x 25, an initiative to improve the gender balance among the leadership of the Financial Times Stock Exchange companies. He has an honorary doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from University College Dublin, and a master’s in management from Stanford Graduate School of Business.