Tony Hayward Is Preparing An Escape Plan For BP And Himself
Late this morning, Tony Hayward, BP’s beleaguered chief executive, will land in Azerbaijan, the oil-rich country by the Caspian Sea, as part of his global mission to save the corporation from rumors and predators. Having visited Moscow last week to tell the Kremlin’s leaders that BP is not for sale or going out of business, he will bring the same message to the Azeri president before heading off to Angola. Indonesia and Iraq, also crucial to BP’s global oil reserves, are among other destinations on his itinerary.Saving BP from collapse has become a full-time occupation for Hayward, although few believe that he can simultaneously save his own career. Brutally mauled by senators during a merciless grilling in Washington three weeks ago, Hayward’s fight for BP’s survival has also become a personal mission to salvage his self-confidence. Although he has no serious enemies within BP, even loyalists speaking off the record admit that he is swinging in the wind. There he will remain until the oil stops gushing into the Gulf.
Within the next four weeks, the corporation expects the well to be capped and the disaster finally contained. According to recent reports, a relief well is now just 20 feet from the rogue well and boring down the last 900 feet on an identical path toward the reservoir 18,300 feet beneath the seabed, where at least 1 billion barrels of oil could still escape into the Gulf. By early August, BP’s engineers hope to execute a “bottom kill,” blocking the rogue well with mud and sealing the leak. After that, Hayward can be expected to make an elegant if reluctant exit.
Just how the mild, 53-year-old geologist blessed with average intelligence became BP’s chief executive is a damning indictment of the pernicious culture that Hayward himself knew needed to be exorcised. But eradicating the poisoned legacy he inherited from John Browne, the publicity-seeking architect of BP’s rejuvenation since the 1990’s, proved too much for a man whose only qualification was to be “not Lord Browne.” Browne, Hayward knew, had weakened BP’s engineering expertise. In pursuit of high profits, Browne had championed “more for less,” cutting costs, especially in safety and maintenance. To prevent more calamities like the accidents in Texas City and Alaska, Hayward needed to rapidly revolutionize BP’s culture. He failed and the consequence was the catastrophe in the Gulf.
Some would say Hayward has still not learned his lesson. He has appointed Mark Bly, BP’s safety and operations chief, to investigate the causes of the blowout. Appointing an insider to investigate his own mistakes reveals the same political ineptitude as Hayward himself has committed in a succession of media fluffs that climaxed at the congressional hearing. After seven hours of grilling in Washington, Hayward emerged shell-shocked and confessed to his own limitations. ‘I’m not a politician,” he moaned. After that, nonexecutive members of BP’s board ordered that he should be eased out of the frontline.
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