LONDON — American Robert Dudley will become BP PLC’s first ever non-British chief executive, the company said Tuesday as it reported a record quarterly loss and set aside $32.2 billion to cover costs of the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Ending weeks of speculation, BP confirmed that Tony Hayward will step down Oct. 1 as the London-based company seeks to reassure both the public and investors that it is learning lessons from the spill.
“BP will change as a result of this accident,” BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told investors during a webcast presentation on the company’s second quarter results, which revealed a record $17 billion loss.
Dudley told reporters Tuesday that he recognizes the complexity of what BP has to do to restore its financial strength and its reputation.
The oil spill, he said, has been a “wake-up call not only for BP, but the oil and gas industry overall, and we will be looking deeply at our review of operational safety and what we have learned from this spill.”
Over the next few weeks, BP will move ahead in parallel with so-called static kill and bottom-kill operations — blasting in mud and cement from the top of the well and from deep underground — and the company said it anticipates the first relief well will be completed during August, subject to weather delays.
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