Who is the brand new BP boss Meg O’Neill? Meet Big Oil’s first feminine CEO seeking to flip the struggling ship round

She is Big Oil’s first female chief executive, the first outsider to take charge of BP in its 116-year history, and one of the few openly gay leaders in the energy industry.

And now Meg O’Neill has the task of reviving one of Britain’s biggest companies.

‘It is going to be a huge job,’ was the verdict of Neil Beveridge, managing director of research at Bernstein.

Donald Trump’s mantra is ‘drill, baby, drill’.

BP, it seems, now agrees.

After an ill-fated push into green energy under former chief executive Bernard Looney and ex-chairman Helge Lund, O’Neill arrives with a firm belief that natural gas is a long-term necessity.

While the outgoing Murray Auchincloss began the pivot back to oil and gas, he was at Looney’s side when the initial change of direction took place.

Meg O’Neill is the most powerful woman in the oil and gas inds

There is likely to be no such flip-flopping under O’Neill, a former ExxonMobil executive who lives in Perth in Australia with her wife Vicky Hayes and teenage daughter.

As chief executive of Woodside Energy, which she joined as chief operating officer in 2018 before taking the top job in 2021, she oversaw the £20bn acquisition of BHP’s petroleum assets.

Woodside doubled oil and gas output on her watch, becoming a top ten global energy company and gas powerhouse, while shelving green projects that did not pass muster.

Speaking to executives at the Melbourne Mining Club in February, the 55-year-old declared: ‘We should prioritise measures that deliver the biggest bang for buck.’

The following month, she told Bloomberg TV: ‘Many nations have aspirations to grow renewables. They’re going to need more gas to partner with those renewables.’

Maurizio Carulli, global energy analyst at Quilter Cheviot, said: ‘The appointment signals a clear pivot back to upstream oil and gas. Her track record, including Woodside’s acquisition of BHP’s oil division, suggests a sharper focus on LNG and international growth.’

O’Neill has, however, attracted criticism from environmentalists while her leadership of Woodside has been questioned in some quarters.

Woodside shares have flatlined over the past five years at a time when even struggling BP has seen a more than 50pc rise. ExxonMobil’s share price, meanwhile, has almost tripled.

‘While BP has chronically underperformed the sector, Woodside has chronically underperformed BP,’ Brynn O’Brien, executive director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, told Bloomberg. ‘O’Neill is a curious choice in that context. Under her leadership, Woodside has pursued high-cost, marginal fossil-fuel projects without delivering strong shareholder returns.’

Paul Gooden, natural resources portfolio manager at Ninety One, added: ‘We suspect that chairman Albert Manifold was encountering resistance to change within BP, the appointment of an external chief executive will help to remove some of those internal barriers.

‘Meg O’Neill’s experience, particularly her 23 years at Exxon, should mean she brings a renewed focus on execution and capital allocation, areas where BP has underperformed in recent years.

‘However, there are no silver bullets, fixing BP’s over leveraged balance sheet won’t be easy, and Woodside’s shares underperformed peers during Meg’s tenure as chief executive.’