• CERAWeek
  • March 18 - 22, 2024
  • About

Starlee Sykes

bp

Senior vice president, Gulf of Mexico & Canada

Starlee Sykes is bp’s Senior Vice President for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada, one of the world’s largest deep-water businesses. Starlee has over 25 years of leadership experience in the energy sector. She led the creation of the first global subsea solutions business and is a strong proponent of standardized industry practices and improving collaboration. Throughout her career, Starlee has led diverse international teams solving some of the industry’s most complex challenges. Starlee takes an active leadership role on several boards, including bp, NOIA, API, Greater Houston Partnership, Spindletop Community Impact Partners and Texas A&M University. Starlee was named ‘2021 International Citizen of the Year’ by the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston, one of the top 25 most influential women in energy by Oil and Gas Investor and one of the most influential women executives by Women Inc. Starlee earned her Mechanical Engineering degree from Texas A&M University.

Sessions With Starlee Sykes

Tuesday, 7 March

  • 11:55am - 12:45pm (CST) / 07/mar/2023 05:55 pm - 07/mar/2023 06:45 pm

    US Oil & Gas: How can it continue to outperform?

    Upstream Oil & Gas
    The combination of surging prices, a new business model and efficient operations in low-risk areas produced dramatic success for North American oil and gas in 2021 and 2022. After years of poor results, the record earnings and free cash flow drove outperformance when compared to every other sector of both equity and debt markets and spread beyond producers to benefit midstream and service sector players. However, sustaining outperformance is a difficult challenge, and this dialogue will explore the strategic issues related to how leading companies plan to add value from here. What role has the new business model—capital discipline and free cashflow maximization—played in the success of U.S. oil and gas? Will this approach work in the future, or will it have to evolve? How much scope exists to add value? Where are we on efficiency gains? Cost reduction? New resources? How deep is the inventory of undrilled wells? Have the best wells been drilled? Despite impressive share performance, oil and gas companies still trade at compressed multiples. What changes that? How do regulatory developments such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) change the future of traditional energy companies? Is the push to decarbonize a threat, an opportunity or a distraction, and how fast and how far can decarbonization go? Is there value for North American companies in integrating through the oil and gas chain, LNG, midstream or processing?
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