Sources say that BP's interim CEO has pledged to continue focusing on costs after Auchincloss' departure.

According to a pair of people who attended the meeting, BP's interim CEO Carol Howle said that the company is focusing on cost -cutting and maintaining its current strategy.

Howle was appointed interim chief after BP abruptly replaced Murray Auchincloss, its former CEO with Meg O'Neill of Woodside Energy last month. He will remain in the role until O'Neill assumes his position in April.

Sources?said that executives at the 'town hall' stressed the importance of keeping costs under control.

BP has pledged to reduce costs by between $4 and $5 billion a yearly from a baseline of?2023 by the end 2027. As of mid-2025, it had already achieved $1.7 billion.

O'Neill was brought in by BP's newly appointed Chair, Albert?Manifold. He will be tasked with reducing BP's existing debt, using the $11 billion from a previously announced $20 billion divestment program.

She will also continue to work to reassure investors, such as the activist hedge fund Elliott Management in the United States, that BP's profitability can be increased by rerouting its spending to oil -and- gas.

William Lin, the gas and low carbon chief, said at the townhall that the company was looking to make progress with its Manakin Cocuina project, which is currently missing a U.S. licence.

BP's last?two quarter results have exceeded analyst expectations, and its shares in the?last 6 months have outperformed those of all its peers except Exxon.

In the past five years, however - which mark its now-abandoned attempts to move deeper into low carbon businesses - its shares have underperformed its peers.

BP declined to comment. (Reporting and editing by Tomasz Janowski, Jan Harvey, and Shadia Nasralla)

(source: Reuters)