BP is committed to staying headquartered in Britain, CEO Bob Dudley told CNBC on Monday.
Dudley, who is in Cairo for the Egypt Petroleum Show, was asked if BP’s head office would remain in the U.K. regardless of the outcome of Brexit negotiations, or whether the company’s presence was conditional on how talks panned out.
“No, no, we’re deeply committed, I mean it’s a great British company, it’s been around for a century — absolutely, BP is there,” he said.
“It’s not for me to speak for Britain by the way, on the negotiations, so nobody should misunderstand that, but for BP, (we’re) deeply committed to Britain, we will be around for a long, long time.”
Dudley added that BP was “very proud to be a British company.”
Regarding Brexit negotiations, Dudley said that he was sympathetic to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May “for everyone wanting to know every move she’s going to make. I mean, you’re in oil and gas, you negotiate all the time, constantly, and negotiations, you don’t do them publicly.”
Everyone needed to take a deep breath when it came to the negotiations, Dudley added. “There are people that want to report on everything every day. That’s not realistic, and in my experience negotiations don’t come together until closer to a deadline, so I think it’s unrealistic for her to negotiate in public. I think that’s not good for the country, actually.”
via CNBC
