BP chief govt Bernard Looney’s pay greater than doubled to £10mn final yr after the UK-listed vitality main delivered a document $28bn in earnings.
The payout follows a tumultuous yr in vitality markets pushed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that led to historic earnings for the oil and fuel {industry} as fossil gas costs soared.
Looney acquired a complete pay bundle of £10.03mn for 2022, the corporate mentioned in its annual report on Friday. That included a base wage of £1.27mn, an annual bonus of £2.37mn paid in money and shares, and a long-term share award price £6.01mn for efficiency over the previous three years.
The bundle, which far exceeded the £4.457mn Looney acquired in 2021, may have been even greater. The remuneration committee mentioned it had “exercised its discretion” to scale back the annual bonus and long-term share award by a mixed £746,000, partially because of four fatalities at BP facilities through the yr.
It additionally exceeded the £9.7mn that BP’s bigger rival Shell paid last year to Ben van Beurden, who stepped down on the finish of December after 9 years within the prime job.
Looney was appointed chief govt in February 2020 with an bold plan to remodel BP into an built-in vitality firm prepared for a internet zero emissions world. However he has struggled to win over traders.
In 2020, within the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, BP’s shares fell to a 25-year low and trailed these of its principal rivals for his first two years as chief govt.
Helped by excessive oil and fuel costs, BP’s inventory has carried out higher up to now 12 months, rising greater than 50 per cent in opposition to a 30 per cent improve at Shell.
BP mentioned Looney’s pay, which was nonetheless decrease than what his predecessor Bob Dudley acquired in 2019, mirrored his success in overhauling BP’s technique, setting new targets to chop emissions and finishing the most important reorganisation within the 114-year-old firm’s historical past.
Paula Rosput Reynolds, chair of BP’s remuneration committee, mentioned the three years since Looney’s appointment had been “among the many most difficult” in BP’s latest historical past. “It took nice resilience to introduce our new technique and extraordinary deal with operations to make sure that the corporate carried out via a pandemic and past.”
A part of that technique has already been tweaked, with BP final month scaling back its industry-leading dedication to scale back emissions by slicing oil and fuel output by 40 per cent by 2030, in contrast with 2019 ranges. BP is now concentrating on a 25 per cent decline, in a transfer that provoked widespread criticism from environmental teams.
Looney insists the corporate stays dedicated to the transformation he began and mentioned greater than half of the corporate’s capital spending will go to its vitality transition companies by the tip of this decade.
