Lord Browne of Madingley, the former chief executive of BP, earned more than £3 million before he resigned last year, it emerged yesterday.

Figures from the oil group's annual report show that the disgraced peer, who stepped down on May 1 last year after admitting that he lied in court, received pay, bonuses and share options worth £3.25 million, including a £1.575 million lump sum. He gained access to another £2.04 million in share options awarded the previous year.

Past and present executive directors at BP earned nearly £12 million for one of the worst years in the oil company's history, with the company reporting a 22 per cent fall in profits and announcing a cull of 5,000 staff in an effort to cut $1.5 billion (£756 million) in costs.

Apart from Lord Browne, none of the directors were granted a performance-related share award for 2007. The report said: “Performance failed to meet satisfactory levels and consequently no shares will vest in the plan for 2005-07.”

Lord Browne's pay dwarfed that of Tony Hayward, who succeeded him. Mr Hayward, previously head of exploration and production, took home £2.15 million, including a base salary of £877,000 and a performance bonus of £1.26 million, but missed out on 436,623 shares worth more than £2.3 million.

Union leaders angrily denounced the payments. Jake Molloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, the union for offshore rig workers, said: “To make these redundancies and cutbacks and to award themselves payments of this nature is hypocrisy beyond belief. It's sickening.”

A spokesman for BP said: “We're a successful company and we have to reward our senior managers appropriately for their performance. Lord Browne has been an exceedingly successful chief executive for many years. The bonuses were based on salary and that reflected his performance over many years.”

Analysts said that Lord Browne's huge payoff reflected years of service to BP. Jason Kenny, senior oil and gas equity analyst at ING, said: “Lord Browne lost a hell of a lot of bonuses accrued over many years because he had to leave in the way he did, taking himself offline rather than letting it go on. While he had a very bad final year, in the years before that you could say that he had trebled the share price of BP.

Mr Kenny added: “Tony Hayward will be getting his payout in two to three years' time once he's turned the company around . . . You don't pay him until he's proved himself.”

BP also said it has exhausted the $1.6 billion it set aside to settle claims from workers affected by the 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery, which killed 15 and injured more than 170. It said that it had set aside another $525 million and has so far settled 2,000 claims.

John Manzoni, the executive director in charge of refining at the time of the blast, left shortly after Lord Browne. He was paid £1.18 million for 2007, including an annual performance bonus of £311,000.

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