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.
