BP Just Lost Its Head of EV Charging — and It Signals a Bigger Shift in Big Oil

Quick Answer: Richard Bartlett, the head of BP’s electric vehicle charging business BP Pulse, has left the company weeks after BP announced a dramatic strategic pivot back to oil and gas. BP has cut its annual EV investment from $5 billion to below $500 million, reduced its global charging footprint from 12 countries to four, and appointed a new CEO with a 23-year ExxonMobil background. The green transition experiment at BP is effectively over.

The Departure That Signals the End of an Era

The exit of Richard Bartlett, who led BP Pulse and also oversaw BP’s European fuels and convenience business, was confirmed quietly by a BP spokesperson. It came weeks after the company’s capital markets day at which it announced it would reduce annual investment in transitional businesses — including EV charging — to below $500 million, down from a planned $5 billion. The timing was not coincidental. When a company slashes the budget of a division by 90% and then the head of that division departs, the direction of travel is clear.

BP Pulse was once positioned as one of five essential growth engines that would transform BP from an international oil and gas company into an integrated energy company. It had ambitions of reaching 100,000 EV charging points globally and was investing aggressively across twelve countries. Today it operates in four — the US, UK, Germany and China — after pulling out of eight markets. More than 100 jobs were cut from its global workforce of 900. The vision has been comprehensively revised.

The New CEO Changes Everything

The strategic context sharpened further when BP confirmed that Meg O’Neill would become its new CEO on 1 April 2026, replacing Murray Auchincloss who resigned in late 2025. O’Neill spent 23 years at ExxonMobil before running Woodside Energy, Australia’s largest listed energy company, where she oversaw the transformative acquisition of BHP Petroleum International. Her background is unambiguously in hydrocarbons. The board’s choice signals a clear intent to close the valuation gap with US peers — Exxon and Chevron, which never meaningfully pivoted to green energy and have significantly outperformed BP on shareholder returns — by returning to core operational strength.

As the Iran war drives oil above $116 and stagflation fears surge, the commercial and geopolitical case for doubling down on hydrocarbons has rarely looked stronger. Energy security has replaced energy transition as the dominant frame for policymakers and investors alike. BP is reading that shift and moving accordingly.

What Remains of BP’s Green Ambitions

BP has been careful to maintain that its EV ambitions have not changed — just the pace and scale of delivery. BP Pulse still operates approximately 40,000 charge points globally and continues to install new hubs in its four remaining markets. In the US, it recently opened a 48-bay Gigahub near Los Angeles International Airport and has plans for 75 locations at Simon shopping centres. A partnership with Waffle House in the southern US brings charging to high-footfall convenience locations.

But the language around these investments has shifted. They are no longer described as transformational growth engines. They are described as focused, profitable, selective — the language of capital discipline rather than strategic commitment. The broader European payments infrastructure battle offers an analogy: incumbents are retreating to defensible positions while challengers build alternative infrastructure. In EV charging, BP’s retreat leaves space for pure-play operators and energy companies with stronger green mandates to fill.

The Broader Lesson

BP’s pivot is not an isolated story. Shell has moderated its green goals. TotalEnergies, which has stayed most committed to its multi-energy approach, remains the outlier among European majors. The initial rush to decarbonise — driven by investor pressure, regulatory signals and ESG capital flows — has collided with the reality of energy demand, EV adoption rates slower than projected, and the economic cost of the energy transition in a high-rate, high-inflation environment.

As Mistral’s $830 million raise to build Nvidia-powered AI infrastructure shows, the most consequential infrastructure investments of this decade may not be in charging points but in compute. For BP, the calculation has shifted: oil and gas generate the cash flows that fund everything else. The green vision was not abandoned — it was deferred, reduced and handed to someone else to build.

Richard Bartlett’s departure is a footnote to that story. But it is a telling one.

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