BP Appoints Emma Lewis as EVP of Downstream, Effective January 2027

BP has announced the appointment of Emma Lewis as its executive vice president of Downstream and a member of the BP Leadership Team. She is expected to take up the position in January 2027.

The Downstream division oversees BP's refining, terminals and pipelines, mobility and convenience, aviation, and bioenergy operations. It manages the production, transportation and sale of fuels, bringing these activities together to create value across the business while meeting customer needs worldwide.

Meg O’Neill, BP chief executive, said: “I am delighted that Emma is joining BP as executive vice president, Downstream. “Emma is a proven leader with deep operational and commercial experience across global downstream businesses. She has a strong track record of improving performance and leading large organizations through change.

“Downstream plays a strategically important role in BP’s success, and I look forward to working with Emma as we continue to strengthen performance and grow value for our shareholders.”

Emma Lewis is a chemical engineer with more than 25 years’ experience across chemicals, refining, manufacturing, commercial operations, supply chains and strategy. She has held senior leadership positions at Shell and ExxonMobil in Europe, Asia and North America.

Key Highlights:

• Emma Lewis will become BP’s executive vice president of Downstream in January 2027
• She brings more than 25 years of experience across major energy companies
• Richard Harding will continue leading the division until Lewis takes over

Emma said: “I’m excited to be joining BP and leading its downstream business. BP has exceptional people, strong businesses and a distinctive integrated model. I’m looking forward to working with the team to further strengthen performance, reinforce safe and reliable operations and deliver sustained value for BP.”

Richard Harding will continue as interim executive vice president, downstream, until Emma takes up the role.

Meg O’Neill added: “I would like to thank Richard for his leadership of Downstream for the last seven months and for the strong foundation he has helped put in place.”

For the last decade, Emma focused on taking the global chemicals business of Shell forward as its executive vice president, Chemicals, as well as its operating assets, commercial activities, policies, polymers interests and joint ventures. With over 25 years' experience in Chemicals, refining, manufacturing, commercial, supply chain strategy, she has held senior roles at Shell and ExxonMobil.

Prior to joining Shell, she spent about 13 years with ExxonMobil in operational, manufacturing, commercial, product-management and supply-chain positions. She had joined ExxonMobil in 1999 and worked in operational and commercial positions in the UK, Belgium and USA.

Among these positions were responsibility for manufacturing at Mont Belvieu, TX, chemicals supply and logistics in the Americas business and sales management for the polyolefins business. Emma is a graduate of the University of Leeds (Chemical Engineering).