The massive oil spill creating the tragic environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is ultimately the responsibility of BP. It's their oil rig, leased as it might be from another company, that suffered an explosion in April and subsequent spill that cannot be contained. The U.S. President, government and U.S. regulatory authorities have all pointed the finger directly at BP. Their stock price is down by a third already and the cost of their insurance has reportedly sky-rocketed.
It has been a veritable public relations nightmare for BP.
And they bloody deserve it.
That's what you get for pumping out a dirty, tricky energy source in a difficult and dangerous location without the proper safety mechanisms and response in place. All thanks to having bought favours on Capitol Hill to ensure de facto self-regulation (read: lowers standards) just so that the corporation could make a few more bucks for its shareholders, investors and Board.
Yeah, they all do it - we know that, BP. Thing is, you got caught with your pants down.
And, jeepers, the BP Board must be ruing the day they made him CEO. The man has only added to the PR disaster that is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for them.
Initially, Tony had the temerity to call the spill “relatively tiny”. He, on behalf of BP, even had the gall to state in the first two days that the oil spill would be negligible, even non-existent, beyond the initial spill into the sea from the explosion itself. How wrong and his lot were proven on that one.
On May 17th, already three weeks into the disaster, he still had the nerve to state to the satellite channel, Sky News, that the environmental cost of the spill would be “very, very modest.” Veteran marine biologist Prof. Rick Steiner vehemently reacted, stating that Hayward's statement was, “simply one of the most arrogant, ignorant, callous statements I have ever heard from any corporate CEO during a crisis such as this.”
Just yesterday the New York Daily News called him "the most hated - and the most clueless - man in America."
Ouch!
It gets better.
Hayward was also quoted by Reuters and many other news agencies as saying repeatedly, “I want my life back”. Indeed. As I'm sure do the 11 men who lost their lives with the explosion on the rig. It was a stupendously insensitive statement given these lives lost in the explosion, not to mention the ongoing environmental and socio-economic catastrophe of the spill. He later apologised for his words.
All of this an astounding lack of the most basic tenets of proper disaster-related communication, not to mention corporate governance, by a corporate CEO.
When a company's disaster is creating an environmental and socio-economic disaster of epic proportions, then it is fitting and fair that someone get fingered. It is not enough for us to finger this thing called 'BP'. After all, what the hell is BP but a juristic (legal) 'person', i.e. an entity that is neither tangible nor someone we can shout at or send to jail. BP is frankly made up, a legal and commercial construct.
A person is required to take the fall. That is why the law recognizes that directors are the 'embodiment' of a corporation. I know, it's another legal construct. But one that does have gravitas. And as the head honcho of all operations, the CEO must take ultimate responsibility for an operational gaffe of these gigantic proportions.
Enter Mr. Hayward.
And that is why it is only fitting and only fair that the person who most 'embodies' the fiasco that is BP should be fingered, held accountable, accused. And that person is Tony Hayward.
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