BP’s Conn, CFO Grote Get 30% of Bonus After Gulf Spill
BP Plc (BP/) awarded directors Iain Conn and Byron Grote 30 percent of their target bonuses following the Gulf of Mexico spill last year while the rest of the company received none.
Conn, head of the refining and market unit of BP that wasn’t directly responsible for the spill, and Grote, the chief financial officer who managed the $40 billion charge for the accident, will also get a salary increase this year. The April 20 blowout at BP’s Macondo well killed 11 workers and triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history, costing Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and exploration and production head Andy Inglis their jobs.
Robert Dudley, who succeeded Hayward, was the only executive to receive a raise to a $1.7 million salary in 2010 on his promotion and won’t get a raise this year. Conn’s total compensation last year was 1.04 million pounds ($1.7 million), and Grote’s was $2.01 million. Hayward and Inglis both received a year’s salary on their departures and no bonus.
“While the tragedy of lost lives and environmental damage remains foremost in everyone’s minds, the committee also wished to fairly acknowledge the good business results in many parts of BP,” DeAnne Julius, chairman of BP’s remuneration committee, wrote in the company’s annual report published today. The bonuses “reflected no payout on the portion related to group results, as with all executive directors.”
New Fields
BP will start pumping oil and natural gas from new fields in Angola, Trinidad and Tobago and Norway this year, it said in the report today. It aims to pump 3.4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day this year, down from 3.8 million last year.
The London-based company sold off $22 billion of assets to shore up its finances after the spill. Today it said the disposals reduced its proved recoverable crude oil and natural gas reserves by 1.2 percent to 18.071 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
BP shares fell 22 percent in 2010 as it posted its first annual loss in two decades and suspended its dividend for the first three quarters. The company restored the dividend at half the previous level for the fourth quarter.
BP said it has so far spent about $14 billion on cleanup and litigation from the Gulf of Mexico spill. It also disputed the amount of oil that gushed into the waters, arguing that it was about 3.2 million barrels, compared with a U.S. estimate of 4.1 million barrels in August.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Swint in London at bswint@bloomberg.net; Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net
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