ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – BP announced Tuesday it will replace the head of its Alaska operations.
Doug Suttles has been named president of BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. and will take over the company's top Alaska job on January 1.
He will replace Steve Marshall, who was named operations development vice president.
Marshall has been in the media and congressional spotlight this year answering questions about the company's corrosion control problem on Alaska's North Slope.
BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said the change was not connected to the company's handling of corrosion.
Marshall will move to a training job and will be a key part of BP efforts to improve the quality of its upstream operations around the world, Beaudo said.
In March, a leak in a transit line between a gathering center and a pump station for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline spilled as much as 267,000 gallons of market-ready crude oil onto tundra. It was the largest oil spill ever in North Slope oil fields.
Suttles will be the 11th BP head of operations in Alaska, Beaudo said. Suttles most recently has been president of BP Sakhalin Inc. in Russia's Far East.