This week Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, must have thought that he had finally moved out of the long shadow of Lord Browne of Madingley. Not only did BP’s third-quarter figures beat City forecasts, but the benefits of the restructuring programme he introduced on arrival two and a half years ago put paid to fears over BP’s dividend, one of the underpinnings of the London stock market.

But yesterday afternoon, a legacy of the Browne years reared up again. While Mr Hayward could have argued convincingly that the fire at a Texas refinery in 2005 happened on Lord Browne’s watch as chief executive, he was himself at the time in charge of exploration and production. Now the US authorities have criticised the actions BP took, while he was chief executive, to clear up after the disaster.

Mr Hayward, 52, has spent the period engaged in a hard balancing act, being careful not to criticise his predecessor while drawing a line under the Browne years that transformed BP.

Lord Browne courted publicity; Mr Hayward shuns it. Lord Browne, an engineer, came up the management route, through roles in finance, for example. Mr Hayward is a geologist and an oil man through and through, who proved himself drilling in various inhospitable parts of the world. Lord Browne is an aesthete who collects arcane Venetian manuscripts. His successor, “an ordinary guy you might meet in the pub”, says one who has had dealings with him, is blokeish and sporty, fond of West Ham and sailing.

He has even, though officially denying this, seemed to want to move on from the “Beyond Petroleum” strategy associated with his predecessor, which seemed designed to draw a veil over BP’s involvement with messy hydrocarbons in favour of greener options.

In a speech to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday, two days after delivering the BP figures, Mr Hayward ridiculed the idea that fossil fuels “can be switched off — like analogue TV”. Demand for energy was projected to rise by about 45 per cent by 2030 — “roughly equivalent to adding two more United States to the world’s consumption”.

From early on, Mr Hayward specialised in structural geology, which studies how rock formations are put together. This turned out to be useful, in career terms, as it was a discipline needed in areas where BP was expanding, such as South America, just as he began his ascent of one of the greasiest poles in UK corporate life.

It is not clear, to this day, if this fortunate career choice was a coincidence. One former colleague who worked with him as a junior geologist recalls: “He was very ambitious even in his first days with BP. I think he was always focused on getting ahead. He was a technically gifted structural geologist, and this was a stepping stone in his career development at BP.”

Mr Hayward joined the group from university, moving to Colombia after a decade and then taking over BP’s Venezuelan offshoot. He relocated to the UK in 1997 and was soon seen as a potential successor to Lord Browne, who had already fast-tracked him for promotion. The latter’s departure was accelerated by an unfortunate court case involving his private life, and when Mr Hayward took the helm in May 2007, BP was in a mess.

As well as the fallout from the Texas fire, its massive Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska had been partly shut down and there were delays to a key platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

Furthermore, the big acquisitions made by Lord Browne during his 12-year tenure — Amoco, Arco and Burmah Castrol — may have kicked BP into oil’s premier league but they had also handed it a cumbersome, bureaucratic management structure.

Mr Hayward brought in consultants. What they found was “pretty ugly”, he admitted. Five months into the job, in a memo that was embarrassingly leaked, he described the oil company’s performance as “dreadful”.

That bloated management structure has been slimmed down — in all, 8,000 jobs will have gone by the end of this year — and Mr Hayward has simplified the supply chain and reformed how the company orders anything from oil rigs to food in the canteen. This week BP said that it could cut costs by another £1 billion this year, meaning the restructuring will eventually reduce overheads by £4 billion.

Sam Laidlaw, the chief executive of Centrica, said that Mr Hayward is “very capable and can connect the operational with the strategic. He doesn’t flap — he’s very calm ... I think people enjoy working with him.”

He added: “John [Browne] grew the company when it really needed to. He got it out of some big strategic difficulties. Now, with lower commodity prices, it’s a case of getting the best returns out of the asset base they have got. I think Tony will be good at that.”

This week’s news was just what the analysts wanted to hear, and Mr Hayward must have thought the ructions of the past few years were behind him. The US authorities had other ideas.

CV

Born 1957, Surrey

Education PhD Geology, University of Edinburgh Career

1982 Joined BP as graduate

1992 Exploration manager, Colombia

1995 President, BP in Venezuela

1997 Director of BP exploration

1999 After merger of BP and Amoco, group vice-president and member of the upstream executive committee

2000 Group treasurer

2002 Executive vice-president, then chief executive, exploration and production

2007 Chief executive

Family Married, two children