TONY HAYWARD - NOT OUR IDOL

From the Guardian:

The former boss of BP admitted last night that the oil giant had been completely unprepared for the Gulf of Mexico accident that nearly sank it financially.

When the crisis hit, BP was forced to make up its oil spill disaster response as it went along, something that made it look "fumbling" and "incompetent" in the eyes of the public, said Tony Hayward.

"Embarrassingly we found ourselves having to improvise on prime-time TV and slap bang in the middle of the glare of the global media.

"Our efforts involved amazing feats of engineering – tasks completed in days that would normally take months, numerous major innovations with lasting benefits.

"But because every move was scrutinised around the world, what the public thought they saw was fumbling and incompetence."

No! You made it up as you went along? Really?

But BP was not the only company at risk from such an event, he added. "The whole industry had been lulled into a sense of false security after 20 years of drilling in deep water without a serious accident, till now," said Hayward, in criticism which will be challenged by oil rivals who have tried to distance themselves from the behaviour of the British oil group.

The other oil companies did it, too?

"For me perhaps the most shattering reflection was just how much havoc can be wreaked by a single accident in one small part of a giant company's operations — an accident moreover that all our corporate deliberations had told us simply could not happen," he said. "For BP this was the ultimate low-probability, high-impact event – a black swan to borrow a term used in the financial crisis."

And now we all know that the impossible happens.

Our federal agencies, especially the Minerals Management Service, are not off the hook. The MMS allowed the oil companies to write the regulations for the service which was established to regulate the oil companies. And the service did not follow up with sufficient inspections to see if the companies followed the rules that they had written.

He told the BBC in a documentary screened on Tuesday night that he would have needed to study drama at RADA rather than geology at Edinburgh University if he had wanted to perform better in front of a hostile US public.

Heh, heh.

Which public would that be? Mainly the public who live on or near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. True, Tony, you are not our Gulf Coast Idol.

Thanks to Cathy for the link.