Robert Dudley: BP CEO

Robert “Bob” Dudley was born on September 14, 1955 in Queens, New York City. Bob grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 1973 he graduated from Hinsdale Central High School in suburban Chicago. Bob earned a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois. He proceeded to earn a Master of International Management degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

In 1979 Bob joined Amoco. He worked in a number of positions including negotiating deals in the South China Sea. In what would be a defining development in his career Amoco had him work in Moscow from 1994 to 1997. Bob became a general manager for strategy for Amoco in 1997. In 1999 after the merger between BP and Amoco he was appointed to a similar role in BP.

Bob was executive assistant to the group chief executive between 1999 and 2000 after which he became group vice president for BP’s renewable and alternative energy activities. Bob became group vice president in 2002 responsible for BP’s upstream business in Russia, the Caspian region, Angola, Algeria and Egypt.

His exposure to Russia certainly played a big role in his becoming the president and chief executive of TNK-BP from 2003 to 2008. This was a joint venture between BP and a group of Russian billionaires known as AAR. Bob later had a falling out with AAR who accused him of favoring BP.  It reached a point where he had to leave Russia in haste because his visa was not renewed. After much difficulty in trying to run the business from outside Russia he resigned in December 2008.

Bob returned to BP in 2009 and was appointed to the BP board and responsible for the group’s activities in the Americas and Asia. He took on a crucial and sensitive job serving as president and executive officer between June 23 and September 2010 of BP’s Gulf Restoration Organization in the US after the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

This stint was short-lived as Bob took on a bigger role of becoming BP’s Group Chief Executive on October 10, 2010.