Hayward: I was vilified over spill
OUTGOING BP boss Tony Hayward yesterday claimed he was “demonised and vilified” over the firm’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis.
But the embattled leader, who is set to hand over the chief executive role in October to BP’s managing director Bob Dudley, accepted the company could not move forward with him at the helm.
“This is a very sad day for me personally,” he said. “Whether it is fair or unfair is not the point. I became the public face [of the disaster] and was demonised and vilified.”
He added: “BP cannot move on in the US with me as its leader… Life isn’t fair… Sometimes you step off the pavement and get hit by a bus.”
Hayward, 53, confirmed his departure and his nomination as a director of TNK-BP, the company’s Russian joint venture. He is taking a year’s salary of £1.045m and will be able to claim a yearly pension of £600,000 from his 55th birthday.
Dudley, who took over as the public face of BP’s response to the spill six weeks ago, pledged yesterday to shake up the company’s culture to improve safety and reliability in an effort to restore BP’s reputation following the spill.
Meanwhile, BP caused further outrage by revealing Hayward will not testify at a US Senate hearing on BP’s role in the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. The hearing, set for tomorrow, on whether BP influenced the release of the Lockerbie bomber, was yesterday postponed, with US senators saying key witnesses had “stonewalled” the investigation by refusing to appear.