BP Board Fires Chair Albert Manifold Eight Months Into Tenure

Big Oil has seen board-room coups before—Exxon’s 2021 Engine No. 1 proxy fight that unseated three directors comes to mind—but BP’s revolving door is starting to resemble the post-Enron (2001-2002) cleanup at Arthur Andersen: repeated leadership purges erode stakeholder trust faster than any single scandal. The Manifold ouster extends a 15-year arc in which environmental pressure, volatile prices, and activist investors have pulled BP between green ambitions (2020 pivot to renewables) and fossil-fuel retrenchment (2025 reset). On a century timescale, corporate governance norms have tightened steadily since the 1933 U.S. Securities Act; boards now act within days, not years, when whistle-blower allegations surface—yet the underlying structure that prioritises quarterly returns over strategic continuity remains intact. Whether this episode matters in 2126 depends less on Manifold’s temperament than on whether BP—and by extension the super-major model—can stabilize leadership long enough to navigate the energy transition without becoming the next Kodak-style casualty of technological disruption.