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Columbia Energy Exchange

Bob Dudley: Reflections on a Career in Energy

January 27, 2020

The past decade has been a turbulent one for the London-based oil and gas major BP, from the serious Deepwater Horizon accident that brought the company to the brink, to navigating its troubled relations with Russia and the oil price collapse of 2014, to charting a path forward – now toward a lower-carbon world to address the challenge of climate change.

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff is joined by BP’s chief executive, Bob Dudley, who has been at the helm of BP for the past decade, and is the first American to head the company. He started his career in the oil and gas industry forty years ago with Amoco Corporation as a chemical engineer. Amoco was then acquired by BP, and Bob took on a number of roles, including working for Lord John Browne, managing BP’s alternative energy business around the time that its Beyond Petroleum Initiative was launched, heading the unique Russian joint oil venture called TNK-BP, and leading American and Asian activities.

Bob is credited for stabilizing, and indeed saving, the company at a pivotal time. Nearly a decade on, BP has emerged as a much stronger company, trying to navigate a rapidly-changing energy landscape, and deal with new pressures, including diversifying into clean energies and figuring out how an oil and gas company responds to climate change.

Bob Dudley steps down as CEO next week, and Jason sat down with him at BP’s London Headquarters to reflect back on his career, and to look ahead on where the company, and the energy industry, may be going.

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