BP's attempt to draw a line under its troubles in the US by axing its chief executive has been blunted after Tony Hayward said he would be "too busy" to attend a Senate hearing on Thursday.
The oil company risked further inflaming a delicate trans-Atlantic relationship when its directors described BP as a "model of corporate social responsibility" despite being at the centre of the worst oil spill in American history.
Speaking to journalists at the company's London headquarters, Hayward claimed that he had been unfairly "demonised and vilified" in the US, where Barack Obama and other politicians have been severely critical of BP's actions and taken exception to some of Hayward's public comments.
The Senate foreign relations committee has asked Hayward to appear in Washington to explain BP's alleged role in influencing the release of the Lockerbie bomber in order to win drilling rights in Libya.
But Hayward said today he could not go because "I have got a busy week [in the office]". BP said it would send another representative to testify at the hearing.
This infuriated committee member Robert Menendez who made reference to the BP boss's pay-off – a year's salary and his pension pot, together worth £11m. "It is apparently more important to BP and Mr Hayward to focus on his multimillion dollar golden parachute than to help answer serious questions about whether the company advocated trading blood for oil," he said.
The committee later postponed the hearing after Menendez accused those asked to attend – two Scottish officials, former justice secretary Jack Straw, Hayward and a second BP official – of stonewalling. "It is utterly disappointing … that none of these key witnesses will co-operate with our request to answer questions before the Senate foreign relations committee. They have stonewalled," Menendez said.
Hayward, explaining his departure from the group he has led for three-and-a-half years, had argued that the Gulf of Mexico blowout on 20 April had left BP a different company. "I believe for it to move on in the United States it needs new leadership and it is for that reason I have stood down as the CEO. I think BP's response to this tragedy has been a model of good social corporate responsibility. It has mounted an unprecedented [spill] response."
The same message was given by Bob Dudley, the BP director in charge of the Gulf clean-up, who will take over the top job from Hayward in October.
Dudley, who will become BP's first American boss, described the company's reaction to the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon as an "unprecedented corporate response" adding that very few companies could have done what it did.
And the future chief executive said the accident was "very complex", caused by multiple failures of equipment and triggered by "a number of companies".
Asked whether Hayward had been unfairly treated, Dudley praised Hayward's leadership, adding: "I think that time will show whether that has been fair or not." He later said he expected his colleague's reputation to be restored, but declined to say whether Hayward could eventually get a wider role in addition to the one he will be nominated for as a non-executive director at the company's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP.
Hayward hinted that he felt he had received an inappropriate level of abuse. "Whether it is fair or unfair is not the point. I became the public face and was demonised and vilified. BP cannot move on in the US with me as its leader," he said, adding that like many aspects of everyday existence "life isn't fair ... sometimes you step off the pavement and get hit by a bus".
Hayward accepted some of the gaffes he had made, such as wanting to "get his life back", had damaged the oil company.
"It may not have been a great PR success. You can argue about whether it could ever have been a great PR success, operationally we capped the well and cleaned up a hell of a lot of the oil."
Hayward was contrite when asked if he could have done anything differently. "Was I close to perfect? Absolutely not. Did I make some mistakes? Of course I did. With the benefit of hindsight would I have done anything different? Of course."
The man who took over from Lord Browne in 2007 defended his right to receive his £10m retirement benefits as well as a year's contractual salary of £1m after spending all his working life at BP. Hayward said: "I have not got some special deal. I am just walking away with a pension that I earned over 30 years."
BP's Swedish chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg has also come under pressure to quit. A major shareholder is reportedly calling for him to take responsibility for the disaster by resigning, but Svanberg said the board had not asked him to stand down and he had no intention of leaving.
The Swede also denied that a decision to sell $30bn (£19bn) of assets to raise cash to pay for the Gulf clean-up, and liabilities now estimated at the same price, would turn BP into a second tier company.
View all comments >
comments (326)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion.
This discussion is closed for comments.
We’re doing some maintenance right now. You can still read comments, but please come back later to add your own.
Commenting has been disabled for this account (why?)
Tony Hayward: BP was 'a model of social corporate responsibility'
No it isn`t.
You are off now, leave quietly and let everyone else sort out the mess thanks.
Hole, digging, stop. Please put into the correct order Tony?
ChrisWoods & Kerrygold
Ask yourself what "Corporate Social Responsibility" would have looked like if Anadarko had been the majority stakeholder?
This piece isn't about the cause of the incident, it's about what companies did after it had happened. BP did not run away or try to hide from it's responsibilities unlike every other stakeholder involved.
You muppets!
Someone gag the bloke for his own safety.
Gaffes or no gaffes, BP position has been made unbeleivably hard by hypotrical views held by most of the US. Their companies also contributed to this mess and have escaped scot free.
The US system is all about finding others to blame. Until recently they were the largest consumers of oil, demanded more deep sea drilling and approved the Gulf of Mexico stations.
We should not be drawn into the hysterical views of Obama whilst he plays politics. In twenty years time when Exxon has bought out a bankrupt BP perhaps we'll realise what really drives US politicians.
@ Jollysailorboy
Its hard to run away from a mess that`s some 100 x 50 miles in size. Do you really think they could have run away from something like this, its not possible. If they did the CEO would have been arrested and the assets of the firm confiscated.
And my version of corporate responsibility (forget Deepwater thats just the icing on the cake) goes to include BP`s long list of issues across the globe where it puts profit before local people. Please Google this, there an awful lot about it.
The only muppets are the ones who believe that BP is the model of corporate responsibility.
@ Jollysailorboy
Its hard to run away from a mess that`s some 100 x 50 miles in size. Do you really think they could have run away from something like this, its not possible. If they did the CEO would have been arrested and the assets of the firm confiscated.
And my version of corporate responsibility (forget Deepwater thats just the icing on the cake) goes to include BP`s long list of issues across the globe where it puts profit before local people. Please Google this, there an awful lot about it.
The only muppets are the ones who believe that BP is the model of corporate responsibility.
Were Truth a complete defense in the UK to any action for Libel, we could have a full and frank public discussion of BP and its practices. As things are, however, the best The Guardian can do is to print stories where its readers can note for themselves the possible irony.
that made me laugh.
i feel sorry for mr. hayward,for being a political scape goat in an already challenged world, under the circumstances i think he did a great job i know i couldn't of filled his shoes and did a better job how about all you folks who put him down and were quick to blame him. if there was any wrong doing on the rig how the hell was he supposed to know he wasn't there,people he trusted to carry out the responsibilities were there.so think about this could you have done a better job then he is the toughest and cruelest political country in the world if not then shut the hell up
Compared to Andarko or Transocean, BP has acted well. They put up all the money up front before blame had even been proportioned and even stumped up the money for their minor partners in the well - they could have said "we'll pay 20 billion dollars less the 35% they owe" but they haven't. They just wrote a cheque. I'd like to see if posters here would write a cheque first to cover all the damage, and then argue over who is to blame later when it wasn't their fault? I suspect most people would protest their innocence from the word go and refuse to pay a penny like Andarko, Exxon, or dare I say... Union Carbide.
Sent to Siberia!
A million Dollars a year for a job well done.
Does BP think we are going to buy their products to pay for this?
I wonder whether the world's top CEOs, top politicians all those in positions of real power actually believe their own nonsense.
I suspect they are so full of self-confidence they assume that regular people will simply believe every thing they say.
They would be amusing harmless bastards in a sensible world. Yet - in this one they have the power to cause misery.
Diddums.
BP only faced up to it and played the CSR game because it was in the US.
If in Africa, it would have been BAU....
Hayward comes across as a cynical cost-cutting, gormless alpha male, typical of most contemporary British CEOs it seems, who got caught in the headlights, out of his boardroom/clubby comfort zone.
Pity he is legally due such a big pension.
Tony Hayward is like one of those turds that no matter how hard you try just won't flush.
US public opinion?
i'm with Tony on this.
America is the country that produces 5% of the worlds oil yet consumes 25%.
America is the country where citys are built that only accomodate cars.
America is the country where all the contracting companies involved in the disaster came from.
America is the country that walked away very smartly from the Bhopal disaster after killiing thousands and thousands of people and not cleaning up AT ALL. Leaving thousands wiuth serious birth defects to this day.
Why exactly should we care about "American public opinion"???
I think that BP have acted with much more corporate social responsibility than did that US company Union Carbide (now bought out by Dow) which was responsible for the Bhopal tragedy. Over 6000 people died, a huge area contaminated and a pitiful amount of compensation paid (after 15 years!). Spare us from the hypocracy of American politicians.
Too many British commentators concentrate on the anti-British rhetoric in the US, and too many Americans commentators concetrate on the (doubtful) Britishness of BP. This is not about whether, as an American or a Brit, you bear some personal responsibility for an unprecedented disaster, it´s about global companies, often with off-shore HQ´s in tax-havens, cutting corners in every way possible to enrich themselves at your expense. Why do you make it so easy for them by pointing across the Atlantic at each other when you should be pointing at them?
The never apologise, never explain, school of British Management has failed. Obama did warn the company that this management style wasn't working but they have persisted to patronise" the small people" and misrepresent the fundamental causes and scale of this environmental disaster. BP is finished as a major oil company and this is largely due to the failure of management.
He was the scapegoat CEO of a scapegoat company demonised by Obama's administration to divert attention away from their own failings in this matter and in general.
However, it would have been very easy for him to have come out with this with less hate directed at him with just a couple of things said differently or not at all.
If a French oil company were to cause an oil well in the English Channel to leak out of control, and the south coast of England were polluted, from the Thames Estuary to the Bristol Channel, then try to imagine the reaction of the British media, and MPs representing the affected constituencies, and the pressure they would bring on the Prime Minister.
No matter that British companies were involved, a huge wave of Francophobe hysteria would engulf our nation.
The fact that the company involved showed great skill and resolution in dealing with the disaster would be almost immaterial.
Anger would focus on the fact that it had ever occurred at all.
If we were to learn that the company concerned had a very poor safety record.
If we saw the Chief Executive blithely sailing his yacht off off Cannes, then anger would be unconstrained.
Those jollysailorboy and HarryA, who are unable to comprehend the scale of this disaster, and the anger of a nation so affected, well they muppets indeed.
Perhaps HarryA, the culture of profit before safety, and the angry defence of BP by British media, tells us what really drives BP, what really drives British media .
Of course, Mr David Cameron's abject arselicking before US media and senators about both BP and Mr Megrahi tells us what motivates British politicians.
"I think our incredibly rich company did the absolute minimum we had to do after causing a massive oil spill in a vulnerable area. I mean what were we supposed to do? what do you mean, not cause the spill in the first place? listen, let's talk pension."
Tony Hayward: BP was 'a model of social corporate responsibility'
I knew I was spending too much on safety equipment. If BP were 'a model of social corporate responsibility', I dread to think what would have happened if they had been guilty of say, gross negligence!
I am also aware that BP, despite American claims to contrary, were not solely responsible. I noted with horror that Haliburton made the faulty well head. Haliburton, what a surprise. The bullet proof, Teflon coated, profits before all other considerations company that just can't do any wrong (because they own America). No wonder Obama is so desperate to put all the blame on "British Petroleum".
What Hayward obviously doesn't get - and as a CEO really ought to have inderstood - is that perception is just as important as what actually goes on. BP may well have acted properly or even generously following the spillage - but it's insensitive to say the least to be crowing about it now. For Hayward to say what he has now said, particularly after his idiotic 'I want my life back' remark, simply illustrates how unfit for his position he was.
As for nasa1966
It's called responsibility and it goes with being at the top of the chain of command. If you're the CEO, you can't say 'Nothing to do with me, guv.'