American Dudley, 64, will step down on February 4, 2020 and retire at the end March, the company said in a statement, adding he will be succeeded by upstream division boss Bernard Looney, from Ireland.
The announcement brings the curtain down on Dudley's 40-year career at the London-listed energy major, eventually steering it back into profit following the deadly oil spill tragedy that badly damaged its reputation.
BP clocked up vast losses on clean-up and compensation costs and was forced to axe thousands of jobs and sell billions of dollars of assets to pay a total bill of $70 billion. Dudley was parachuted into BP in October 2010 after his predecessor, Briton Tony Hayward, was forced to quit amid heavy criticism of his handling of the disaster. "Bob... was appointed chief executive at probably the most challenging time in BP's history," said Chairman Helge Lund.