BP hired its first independent safety expert yesterday as the oil group entered a new era by holding its first board meeting after the resignation of Lord Browne of Madingley as chief executive.

As the meeting in Washington began, BP said that it had appointed L. Duane Wilson, a former refining executive at Conoco, the American oil group, to monitor its progress in improving safety over the next five years.

The move is in line with the recommendations this year of the Baker report into the Texas City refinery explosion, which killed 15 workers in March 2005.

Mr Wilson was one of the 11 committee members on the Baker panel. A BP spokesman said: “He is a man of much experience – and who better to understand what the panel wants to see than one of its own members?”

The announcement came as messages of support for Lord Browne continued to flood into BP after his dramatic resignation last week. More than 1,500 BP employees from around the world have e-mailed the former chief executive through a page created on the company’s intranet.

A BP spokesman said that the group had also received several hundred external e-mails, nearly 300 letters and several bunches of flowers at its St James’s Square headquarters in London.

Lord Browne resigned on Tuesday last week after being found to have lied to a court about his relationship with Jeff Chevalier, a 27-year-old Canadian.

Tony Hayward, his successor as chief executive, is believed to have spelt out only part of his vision for the group at yesterday’s board meeting.

Sources close to the company insisted that it was a case of “business as usual”, despite last week’s events.

Mr Hayward is widely expected to announce a board-room reshuffle in the next two to three weeks.

The City is predicting that John Manzoni will leave his post as chief executive of BP’s refining and marketing business.

Mr Manzoni has been criticised for the Texas City blast, but he was also the closest challenger to Mr Hayward for the chief executive role.

Peter Sutherland has already committed himself to remaining as chairman into 2009 and Byron Grote is expected to stay on as finance director.

However, analysts are not expecting Mr Hayward to announce a significant strategy update for months.

A BP spokesman said that the group was working with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after being receiving warnings over its safety record in the North Sea.

The HSE has served 14 “improvement notices” on the group in the past year after officials spotted potential problems at a number of installations. BP said yesterday that it had resolved 11 of them so far.

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