Chief executive gets bonus and share payout despite the oil company paying out £5bn to cover the long-running lawsuit over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill
BP rewarded chief executive Bob Dudley with a $1.6m (£1m) bonus and share payout last year despite paying out £5bn to cover the long-running lawsuit over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Dudley was handed the bonus on top of his $1.7m pay "for turning around the company" after it plunged into loss after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that left 11 workers dead and much of the Louisiana's Gulf coast covered in oil.
Former finance director Byron Grote, who took on a more general corporate business role in January, topped Dudley with a combined bonus and share payout worth $2.1m.
Iain Conn, head of refining and marketing, received more than $1.4m in bonuses, shares and cash in lieu of a pension contribution.
The pay and bonus figures were revealed in filings that Britain's biggest oil group made to the US securities and exchange commission as part of its New York listing. They were published only a day after the oil firm settled with restaurants, fishermen, hotel owners and other businesses and individuals affected by the blowout and subsequent spill disaster.
Shares in BP on Tuesday dipped after rising nearly 2% on Monday as the City digested the £5bn settlement agreed over the weekend.
A BP spokesman said: "Bob Dudley and his management team performed exceptionally well. They have put BP back on track to recovery. They turned a $5bn loss in 2010 into a $24bn profit in 2011.
"The company delivered $22 billion cash flow, took the value of assets sold above $20 billion, resumed dividend payments, and won a record 55 new exploration and production opportunities.
He added: "The downstream business delivered a record year of earnings and the company generally made huge progress in implementing a new safety organisation worldwide and fundamentally restructuring its upstream business."
BP's future was put in doubt when the Deepwater Horizon well started spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Shares valued at more than 650p before the accident, had slumped to 305p, within months. The chief executive at the time, Tony Hayward, came under attack from US congressmen for mishandling the aftermath of the spill and eventually resigned.
Dudley has overseen a rise in the share price to 504p, though his record has been tarnished by failed attempts to establish a large presence in Russia.
The company still faces claims from various states and most significantly action by the Department of Justice, which said at the weekend the private settlement did not compensate for significant damages or BP's "violation of the law".
The US state is bringing a negligence case against BP for the explosion on April 2010, which caused millions of barrels of oil to be leaked from the Deepwater Horizon rig, killed 11 workers and polluted beaches in Louisiana.
If BP is found "grossly negligent" it could be fined as much as $18bn under the Clean Water Act alone but the company said – as it had argued all along – that this would not be the case. It said the £5bn settlement reinforced previous estimates that the total cost of all liabilities should be no more than $37.2bn.