British oil supermajor, headquartered in St James's Square, London, and once in effect a branch of the British state in the Middle East. BP runs one of the world's biggest oil-trading desks, trading around 12m barrels of oil per day—roughly 11 times its own production. The trading unit earned $2.2bn in the first quarter of 2026, up from almost nothing a year before, as price volatility from the Iran war created opportunities for traders to exploit regional price discrepancies. BP's share price rose 14-17% in early 2026, in common with European rivals TotalEnergies and Eni.
Since 2020 as many people have run BP as have run Britain. Helge Lund, a Norwegian, served as chairman and pursued a net-zero strategy that critics argue made BP uninvestable. In 2025 Albert Manifold, the long-serving former boss of Irish building-materials firm CRH, succeeded him; he was sacked unanimously by the board in May 2026 after less than eight months, in a brief statement citing "serious concerns" over governance, oversight and conduct. Meg O'Neill is BP's chief executive. Dame Amanda Blanc led the search that brought in Mr Manifold.
BP is the most indebted of the major oil companies and still carries the weight of failed renewable-energy ventures. It made a large oil discovery off the coast of Brazil in 2025. The corporate restructuring being pursued under O'Neill is partly the work of Elliott Management, an American activist hedge fund holding a stake. Exxon and Chevron have together gained $400bn in market value over the past decade; BP has not kept pace.
neutron bomb, n.: An explosive device of limited military value because, as it only destroys people without destroying property, it must be used in conjunction with bombs that destroy property.