BP officials on Saturday scrambled yet again to respond to another public relations challenge when their embattled chief executive, Tony Hayward, spent the day off the coast of England watching his yacht compete in one of the world’s largest races.
Two days after Mr. Hayward angered lawmakers on Capitol Hill with his refusal to provide details during testimony about the worst offshore oil spill in United States history, and one day after BP’s chairman said the chief executive would not be as involved in daily operations in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Hayward sparked new controversy from afar.
“He is having some rare private time with his son,” a BP spokeswoman, Sheila Williams, said in a telephone interview on Saturday.
But Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, who taped an interview for ABC’s “This Week,” called Mr. Hayward’s attendance at the race “part of a long line of P.R. gaffes and mistakes” that he has made.
“To quote Tony Hayward, he’s got his life back,” Mr. Emanuel said.
On May 31, six weeks after the spill began, Mr. Hayward uttered “I’d like my life back,” a comment that struck many in the gulf region as insensitive, and for which he eventually apologized.
On Saturday, Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, called Mr. Hayward’s yacht outing the “height of arrogance,” in an interview with Fox News.
“I can tell you that yacht ought to be here skimming and cleaning up a lot of the oil,” Mr. Shelby said. “He ought to be down here seeing what is really going on. Not in a cocoon somewhere.”
But Mr. Hayward’s role in the gulf became the topic of further speculation on Saturday, even as Ms. Williams, the BP spokeswoman, insisted that Mr. Hayward was still in charge of the company and the enormous cleanup operations.
“Tony receives regular updates from the gulf,” she said in an e-mail message.
On Friday, the chairman of the board of BP, Carl-Henric Svanberg, told the British TV network Sky News that Mr. Hayward would be “now handing over” the daily operations in the gulf to Robert Dudley, an American who joined BP as part of its acquisition of Amoco a decade ago.
On Saturday, BP tried to clarify what Mr. Svanberg had said about the transition of leadership in the gulf. “What he meant by ‘now,’ ” Ms. Williams said, was that “there would be a transition over to Bob over a period of time.”
“Obviously, Tony’s main priority remains overseeing all BP operations,” she said. “Over all, there will be some responsibilities handed over, but Tony will remain in full control until we have stopped the leak.”
When that might happen is not clear. Crude oil is flowing at a rate estimated between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels of oil a day from the damaged well, and BP has been able to capture only a percentage of that with its current containment methods.
BP said it was aiming to stop the leak in August, when two relief wells it is drilling will intersect with the damaged one. The company said on Friday that it was ahead of schedule on one of the wells and within 200 feet of the side of the damaged well, but that the drilling would proceed more slowly the closer it got.
Workers had captured 24,500 barrels of oil on Friday before shutting down the operation because of a malfunction on the vessel that is siphoning the oil from the leaking well — 1,000 fewer barrels than on Thursday. Operations restarted early Saturday.
By then, Mr. Hayward was already in Cowes on the southern coast of England for the J. P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, a yacht race around the Isle of Wight. A spokeswoman for the race said in an e-mail message “that a gentleman by the name of Tony Hayward is a co-owner of an entered boat called ‘Bob’ that was racing today, however his name did not appear on any crew list.”
The boat finished fourth in a class of 45 others.
(Source: NY Times)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
5 Responses
This criticism of Mr. Hayward is totally off the wall, and utterly rediculous!
So some stupid Republican says his yacht should be skimming off the oil?
Where was this Republican when Obama was turning away the
ships from other countries that were equipped to do that job?
I have always had a hard time accomplishing anything with someone standing over me barking orders and yelling in my ear what a lousy job I was doing.
What if Mr. Hayward thinks better when he can be away from all the intensity and uproar?
Does he have to sit around on a dock all day wearing sack cloth and being berated by a bunch of outraged peopel who are nothing but pawns in teh hands of the Anti American anti business pro Stalinist Russia media?
What is that going to accomplish?
He knows that when someone gives you a job that you don’t want to do, if you do a really bad job, they will give the job to someone else.
“There’s no oil in this water, Boss!”
The Obama Regime is the last group of people to talk about him going to a yacht race. Lets not forget who is the one who has played golf many times in the last 2 months, who has taken the time to wine & dine, & who has the time to run around the country with his wife. THE NAME IS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA!!!!
Besides that, Hayward was removed from the day to day oversight of the spill.
President Obama did NOT cause the problem. The president of BP should be in jail for criminal negligence not on his yacht.
4,
The ‘president’ of BP didn’t cause the ACCIDENT either.
It was BP or whoever ran the rig that wanted to use dispersing chemicals and couldn’t because environmental wakkos. Well you have your wish!
It was BP or whoever ran the rig that wanted to use fire to burn off the oil before it went any place.
The governor of Louisiana has been SCREAMING for booms but Obama wouldn’t release them for use so they sit in a warehouse some place.
What about the fact that your OBAMA REGIME wouldn’t allow THIRTEEN countries to help with skimmers etc to contain as well as to clean up or diminish the oil? The president was enforcing a law on the books since 1912 or so that made sure unions were used. The problem is that EVERY OTHER PRESIDENT has waved that law during an emergency. All except Obama who is, zulst mich moychil zayn, in bed with one of the biggest if not the biggest union in the country.
So if you want to talk about who should be brought up on charges, start with BHO.