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BP CEO, Defending His Reset, Says Company to Be More Focused

BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Murray Auchincloss appeared at a key US energy major conference in Houston on Tuesday, talking up his reset for the troubled British oil major. Under pressure from activist Elliott Investment Management,  a new strategy outlined in late February focused firmly on raising cash flow by focusing on oil and gas […]

BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Murray Auchincloss appeared at a key US energy major conference in Houston on Tuesday, talking up his reset for the troubled British oil major.

Under pressure from activist Elliott Investment Management,  a new strategy outlined in late February focused firmly on raising cash flow by focusing on oil and gas production and scaling back renewable investments — his plans have had a mixed reception. Speaking at CERAWeek by S&P Global, he argued for his vision for a leaner, more focused BP. 

The company needs to “focus on fewer things, with higher returns,” he said.

Auchincloss said he’s met 40% of shareholders over the past few weeks and they all seem “pretty satisfied.” He outlined plans to grow production in two key regions: the US and the Middle East. He’s bullish on prospects in the US Gulf, where BP has 10 billion barrels of resources to develop. He also talked up plans to work on Iraq’s Kirkuk oil field and expanding in Abu Dhabi.

He said the company would remain in renewable energy markets because its giant trading business needed a steady supply of electrons, but by using partnerships, it could redirect capital toward oil and gas projects that offered higher rates of return.

BP has already placed its offshore wind assets in a joint venture with Japanese utility JERA. Auchincloss said in Houston that it planned to bring in a partner for its Lightsource solar business. That would actually enable the business to expand its potential rate of development to 6 gigawatts to 8 gigawatts a year from around 5 gigwatts today.

Since unveiling the strategy on Feb. 26, BP shares have fallen almost 6%, losing almost twice as much as larger UK rival Shell Plc.



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BP CEO, Defending His Reset, Says Company to Be More Focused

BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Murray Auchincloss appeared at a key US energy major conference in Houston on Tuesday, talking up his reset for the troubled British oil major. Under pressure from activist Elliott Investment Management,  a new strategy outlined in late February focused firmly on raising cash flow by focusing on oil and gas production and scaling back renewable investments — his plans have had a mixed reception. Speaking at CERAWeek by S&P Global, he argued for his vision for a leaner, more focused BP.  The company needs to “focus on fewer things, with higher returns,” he said. Auchincloss said he’s met 40% of shareholders over the past few weeks and they all seem “pretty satisfied.” He outlined plans to grow production in two key regions: the US and the Middle East. He’s bullish on prospects in the US Gulf, where BP has 10 billion barrels of resources to develop. He also talked up plans to work on Iraq’s Kirkuk oil field and expanding in Abu Dhabi. He said the company would remain in renewable energy markets because its giant trading business needed a steady supply of electrons, but by using partnerships, it could redirect capital toward oil and gas projects that offered higher rates of return. BP has already placed its offshore wind assets in a joint venture with Japanese utility JERA. Auchincloss said in Houston that it planned to bring in a partner for its Lightsource solar business. That would actually enable the business to expand its potential rate of development to 6 gigawatts to 8 gigawatts a year from around 5 gigwatts today. Since unveiling the strategy on Feb. 26, BP shares have fallen almost 6%, losing almost twice as much as larger UK rival Shell Plc. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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