BP chief in India to keep in contact with partners

Company says nothing much should be read into the visit.

On his first visit to India after taking over as BP Plc Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Bob Dudley met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but what the CEO of the most talked petroleum company of the year did in his less than a day trip was to present “his credentials”.

Dudley’s schedule is tight, as he goes globe trotting after the company successfully managed to plug the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico on September 19. Dudley was accompanied by outgoing CEO Tony Hayward. “Dudley has been visiting many countries where BP has business interests as part of the handover from his predecessor as CEO, Tony Hayward. He was there to meet appropriate officials and keep in contact with our business partners,” said a spokesperson at BP in an e-mailed response from London. The BP executive’s itinerary is a “confidential information for reasons of security”, said an executive, hinting the green brigade could create problems for him.

According to a BP executive, the visit to the prime minister was a courtesy call. Petroleum Minister Murli Deora had last night hosted Dudley for a dinner at his house. “Nothing much should be read in the visit,” said the executive.

CEOs of most global companies visit countries where they are present whenever they take over. In case of oil honchos, they make it a point to do “courtesy” calls on political leadership, since the future in oil and gas is linked to political decisions. Perhaps nobody knows this better than BP, which recently faced a huge political whip for oil spill in the United States.

Dudley visited Russia in August and has plans to visit other countries of operation. Russian operations are important for the company since it accounts for a quarter of its global oil output. There, he met shareholders of its Russian joint venture TNK-BP and top government officials. Dudley is a former CEO of TNK-BP, in which BP has a 50 per cent stake. The company is planning to sell its 35 per cent stake in $1.3-billion Nam Con Son gas project in Vietnam to TNK-BP. ONGC Videsh is eyeing the BP stake in the project, where it has 45 per cent share. If BP decided to exit Vietnam project, “we may think of transferring the interest to an affiliate company (TNK-BP),” Dudley had told reporters yesterday. Prior to landing in Delhi last evening, the BP chief executive had met Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani and Tata Chairman Ratan Tata. RIL and Tata are partners of BP in oil exploration and solar energy businesses.

Oil spill was not on his agenda here, since the company has a small presence in India — one coal bed methane block and an oil block, where seismic surveys are going on, according to a BP executive.

The British company has about $3 billion worth operations in India, of which the major chunk comes from sale of Castrol brand of lubricants. It also runs trading operations in petrochemicals and liquefied natural gas from India.

Another major business segment for the company is outsourcing since its entire global information technology operations are run from India by four vendors — Infosys, IBM, Accenture and TCS.