Joshua Eliot Stone's questions to BP PLC (BP) leadership • Q4 2024
Question
Joshua Eliot Stone of UBS Group AG inquired about the recent weak performance in BP's refining and trading division, asking for confidence in improvement plans and any early insights into Q1 trading.
Answer
CEO Murray Auchincloss acknowledged the challenging year for refining due to industry-wide margin issues and a significant outage at the Whiting refinery. He outlined a four-point plan for improvement focusing on reliability, commercial optimization, cost reduction, and less complex turnarounds in 2025. He described trading as 'average' but noted it met its 5-year track record, and mentioned that refining margins were beginning to uptick in the current quarter.