Massive Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill

[J]

Good Lord. At this point, there's really no distinguishing BP from a Captain Planet villain.

It gets better.

Times-Picayune link

Hearings: BP did not suspend drilling operations after report of leaking blowout preventer
Published: Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 9:13 AM Updated: Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 11:26 AM
David Hammer, The Times-Picayune David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

This is an update from the joint hearings by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement investigating the causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20.

The Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer -- the key device for shutting off a wild oil well -- had a leak in the days before it failed to operate, which may have required BP to suspend operations under a federal regulation, a BP company man testified Tuesday.

Well site leader Ronald Sepulvado told a Marine Board investigative panel in Kenner that before he wrapped up his stint as BP's top man on the rig four days before the April 20 accident, he reported that one of the control pods on the blowout preventer, or BOP, had a leak.

He said he told his supervisor in Houston, BP team leader John Guide, and assumed that Guide would notify federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service. According to investigators, that never happened.

Federal Regulation 250.451(d) states that if someone drilling in federal waters encounters "a BOP control station or pod that does not function properly" the rig must "suspend further drilling operations until that station or pod is operable."

Asked if that was done, Sepulvado said it wasn't.

"I assumed everything was OK because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to MMS," Sepulvado said.

Sepulvado said he didn't consider the leaking BOP pod a "critical function of the BOP stack" and said the whole device "didn't lose functionality."

The BOP has become a major focus of the investigation into what went wrong on Deepwater Horizon when the well 5,000 feet below blew out, set off explosions that killed 11 people onboard and eventually created the largest oil leak in U.S. history. The BOP is a 450-ton stack of steel valves and pistons, operated with hydraulics to close over the well if oil or natural gas threatened to kick up and out of the hole.

The Deepwater Horizon appeared to be out of compliance with another federal regulation requiring independent inspection of a rig's blowout preventer every three to five years.

Investigators have said they had no record of an inspection after the year 2000. Jason Mathews, a member of the Marine Board panel, said the rig was "way past" the inspection requirement in Section 250.446(a) of the code.

And there's more. Really, there is more. Just look the headlines from July 20th, I don't know what else to say.


Oh yeah, and the Chinese connection, from the country which brought us poisoned food, lead tainted toys and drywall with extra formaldehyde, they now (allegedly) give us the gift of faulty blowout preventers and oil spews.

Guardian link

BP oil spill: failed safety device on Deepwater Horizon rig was modified in China

Blow-out preventer was sent to Far East at BP's request rather than overhauled in US
* Tim Webb
* The Observer, Sunday 18 July 2010


BP ordered the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, whose explosion led to the worst environmental disaster in US history, to overhaul a crucial piece of the rig's safety equipment in China, the Observer has learnt. The blow-out preventer – the last line of defence against an out-of-control well – subsequently failed to activate and is at the centre of investigations into what caused the disaster.

Experts say that the practice of having such engineering work carried out in China, rather than the US, saves money and is common in the industry.

This weekend BP remained cautiously optimistic that the cap placed on top of the Gulf of Mexico well on Thursday night would continue to hold back the torrent of oil. It is the first time the flow has been stopped since the accident happened almost three months ago. But BP said that the pressure readings from the Macondo well were not as high as it had hoped, which could indicate that it has ruptured and that oil could be leaking out somewhere else.

There is no evidence that the significant modifications to the blowout preventer (BOP), which were carried out in China in 2005, caused the equipment to fail. But industry lawyers said BP could be made liable for any mistakes that a Chinese subcontractor made carrying out the work. It would be almost impossible to secure damages in China, where international law is barely recognised.

It is understood that lawyers for Cameron International, the manufacturer of the BOP, will argue the device was so significantly modified in China that it no longer resembled the original component, and that Cameron should therefore not be held liable.

Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon, which bought the BOP from Cameron, has already told congressional hearings into the disaster that the modifications were carried out at BP's request and "under its direction" as the lessee of the rig. BP and Cameron declined to comment this weekend.

Responding to the latest developments in the Gulf, President Obama said that it was too early to say if the well had been permanently fixed. "We're moving in that direction, but I don't want us to get too far ahead of ourselves," he said.

BP has been monitoring the pressure inside the well since Thursday. Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral overseeing the response effort, said that pressure of about 7,500 pounds per square inch would show the well was intact, while pressure that lingered below 6,000 psi would indicate it had been damaged and could be leaking. The pressure on Friday night remained at about 6,700 psi and was rising only fractionally.

Allen has told BP to step up monitoring for any seabed breaches and gather additional seismological data to detect any pockets of oil in the layers of rock and sediment around the well.

This week David Cameron will travel to the US to meet Obama and other politicians where he will stress the importance of BP to the UK economy. Business figures such as Lord Jones, the UK trade ambassador and former CBI boss, criticised Cameron for not being sufficiently supportive of the company last month after he said that he "understood the US government's frustrations" over BP's failed attempts to stop the leak.

A government adviser said that Cameron and Obama shared common interests over the crisis, and that both wanted BP to survive the incident. BP accounts for over a tenth of all share dividends paid by UK companies, and pension funds rely on the income it generates. Politicians in the US want BP to make enough profits to pay potentially billions of dollars in compensation and damages arising from the spill.

[FSTargetDrone]

I have no doubt the video feeds we see are Kosher. What is mystifying is why they lied (they are essentially lying about information, in this case images superimposed on an old photograph) for no reason. Showing a doctored image serves no purpose, not of any kind. If you are caught (and it's no surprise they were, because it was so sloppily done--and I suspect the EXIF data of the base photo would have been discovered eventually, without the crude cut & paste), then you've just made the situation worse. For no gain at all. They can go ahead and blame some photographer, but this belongs to them and they are responsible.

[salm]

Ok, for what purpose would you do that other than to imply that you're doing a job that you're not? Are they so worried about presenting the best image possible that they're willing to run the risk of being found out for essentially lying? On something so small and simple as this? After all the other lies and false information they've put out? This is extraordinarily retarded.

Well, this is something done quite frequently by photographers. The Photoshop guy probably thought that the blank screens destroyed the balance of the image and simply copy and pasted the screens.
I´m not saying that´s 100% sure but i´ve worked in image editing for photographers while being an uni student and this is exactly the stuff we did there.
To me this looks like an honest mistake and miscommunication as opposed to intentional lying.

[Terralthra]

As noted in one of the articles, the image of the command center is from 2001. There's no way that you can call pasting current crisis video feeds into an image from 10 years ago and then posting it as a legitimate image anything but a lie.

[aerius]

To quote John McEnroe, "You can not be serious!"

Washington Post link

Small leaks spring at BP oil well; cap to stay in place for now

In Kenner, La., a new round of hearings on the Deepwater Horizon explosion opened Monday with members of a government panel pressing the chief rig engineer to expand on an earlier statement describing the chaotic final moments on the burning rig.

In that statement, which has not been made public, Stephen Bertone said that the captain of the rig screamed at a crew member for pressing either a distress button or a disconnect button and, referring to an injured man on a stretcher, said, "Leave him."

But at Monday's session of the joint U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, Bertone said, "I honestly don't feel anything in that statement needs to be changed," and his attorney, Stephen D. London, resisted efforts to get him to describe the scene anew.

Panel co-chairman Hung M. Nguyen of the Coast Guard said that the only way Bertone could avoid answering questions from the panel was to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Nonetheless, the panel permitted Bertone to leave the witness table after about four hours of testimony without explicitly invoking the Fifth Amendment or elaborating.

The skirmish was the first of what could be several tests for the government panel. Two key BP officials who had been scheduled to testify this week canceled for medical reasons, including Donald Vidrine, one of the Deepwater Horizon's "company men," as those who represent BP on rigs are known.

The hearing did produce some new details.

One witness described how BP mixed a large quantity of two chemicals and injected them into the well to flush out drilling mud. But the chemicals aren't usually mixed together, and the injection of more than 400 barrels of dense, gray fluid were about double the quantity normally used for the task, said Leo Lindner, a drilling fluid specialist for contractor M-I Swaco.

The reason for the action: BP had hundreds of barrels of the two chemicals on hand and needed to dispose of it, Lindner testified. By first flushing it into the well, the company could take advantage of an exemption in an environmental law that otherwise would have prohibited the discharge of the hazardous waste into the gulf, he said.

"It's not something we've ever done before," he said.

Improvising

Despite assurances from a BP specialist, Lindner conducted his own improvised experiment the night before the explosion to double-check. He mixed a gallon of one substance with a gallon of the other. When the well exploded, a fluid that fit its general description rained down on the rig. Bertone said part of the rig was covered with an inch or more of material that he said resembled "snot."

Bertone also testified that a variety of maintenance problems afflicted the Deepwater Horizon in the months before it exploded and sank, killing 11 workers and triggering the massive spill.

A BP audit of the rig in September found 390 maintenance issues that had not been resolved, BP lawyer Richard Godfrey said while questioning Bertone. Godfrey said the auditors estimated that it would take 3,545 hours to make repairs.

Bertone said many of the items listed in the September audit were based on a new maintenance program that was not tailored or relevant to the rig.

He testified that the computer on a chair used by the rig's driller had been malfunctioning and that its hard drive had been replaced. When the computer froze, it rendered the driller blind to conditions in the well unless he switched chairs. In addition, one of the rig's thrusters had been having problems for eight months, he said, and the rig had experienced partial blackouts.

Ronnie Penton, an attorney for one of the rig workers, said in an interview after the hearing that the double-sized dose of fluid skewed a crucial test of pressure in the well just hours before the blowout. Based on the test BP concluded it was safe to continue displacing the heavy mud from the well in favor of much lighter sea water.

[Erik von Nein]

You know, I keep thinking it'd be hard to be surprised by anything BP does, but here I am being surprised.

[FSTargetDrone]

You know, I keep thinking it'd be hard to be surprised by anything BP does, but here I am being surprised.

It's terribly clichéd to say so, but really, if someone tried to take all of this and pass it off as a novel, it would be dismissed as badly-written fiction.

[Gaidin]

It's terribly clichéd to say so, but really, if someone tried to take all of this and pass it off as a novel, it would be dismissed as badly-written fiction.

I don't know...Neal Stephenson did a pretty good job with Zodiac. Though that could be more the fact that it was marketed as eco-terrorism instead of incompetent corporation screws up.

[J]

You know, I keep thinking it'd be hard to be surprised by anything BP does, but here I am being surprised.

It gets better.

Sky News link

Oil Rig Warning System Was 'Off' Before Blast
3:10pm UK, Saturday July 24, 2010
Kat Higgins, Sky News Online

A worker on the oil rig at the centre of the Gulf of Mexico spill has said a crucial warning system was switched off before the explosion that killed 11 people in April.

The chief technician who works for Transocean, which BP had contracted to do the drilling on the Deepwater Horizon, told a federal panel in New Orleans that the alarms were switched off to help workers sleep.

This meant fire or high gas levels would not be detected.

Mike Williams said the general alarm had been switched to "inhibited" before the blast on April 20.

Mr Williams told the hearing that when he questioned why it was disabled he was told it was because they "did not want people woken up at 3am due to false alarms".

If the system had been turned on it could possibly have given an earlier warning of the imminent explosion to those working in the drilling rooms where several of the workers died.

He also explained that another device which was meant to shut down the blowout preventer if gas levels reached high levels had been disabled or bypassed some time before.

He said he raised concerns about this but was told by Transocean supervisor Mark Hay: "Damn thing's been in bypass for five years. As a matter of fact, the entire (Transocean) fleet runs them in bypass."

Mr Williams has filed a lawsuit against Transocean and BP and is one of many workers who have testified about breakdowns and flaws on the rig.

His revelations come as teams working to stop the leak in the Gulf of Mexico return to the oil spill site to resume work.

They had been ordered to evacuate as it looked like tropical storm Bonnie was going to hit the area.

However, the weather has not caused the anticipated problems and Bonnie was downgraded to a tropical depression.

The US National Hurricane Center said on Saturday it was degenerating into an area of low pressure and appeared less likely to gain strength as it moves through the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile the Financial Times has reported that the British-based firm is planning to begin drilling for oil in water off Libya.

This is despite the international row over its role the ongoing environmental disaster and allegations that it influenced the decision-making process before the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

The company struck a £583m deal in 2007 to acquire gas and oil fields in the area.

[Erik von Nein]

Geh, man. Why is this reaching Chernobyl-levels of incompetence?

[Broomstick]

Because that's how epic fuck-ups happen: Chernobyl levels of incompetence.

[Companion Cube]

A ground-level view of BP's cleanup operations:

BP Cleanup Workers Gone Wild
— By Mac McClelland
| Thu Jul. 22, 2010 4:00 AM PDT

I hear about the race riot at Daddy's Money almost as soon as I arrive on Grand Isle, Louisiana. My friend and I are going to the bar tonight to catch the "female oil wrestling" oil-spill cleanup workers have been packing in to see on Saturday nights. When we stop by the office of the island's biggest seafood distributor, he tells us that two days ago a bunch of black guys and a bunch of white guys got into a big fight at the bar. It spilled out all over the street and had to be broken up by a ton of cops.

According to the Census, 1,541 people live in this slow Southern resort town. An estimated 2.9 of them are black. That was before the spill. The seafood guy gestures in the direction of the floating barracks being built on barges in the bay to house the lower-skilled cleanup workers, and says that people think the barracks will keep those workers—who are mostly black—from "jumping off" onto dry land and causing trouble.

That night, dozens of men in race-segregated packs crowd around to watch strippers dance around and then tussle inside the bouncy inflatable ring set up inside Daddy's Money. Female oil wrestlers need, obviously, to be oiled. Plastic cups full of baby oil are being auctioned off, along with the right to rub their contents all over one of the thong-bikinied gals. "I hope there's no dispersant in that oil!" someone quips. The bidding before the first match starts at $10; it ends pretty quickly when some kid offers $100.

"He outbid me!" the guy next to me yells. His name is Cortez. He bid $80. He has dollar bills tucked all the way around under the brim of his hat, and piles of them in his fist. He has spent $200 of his $1,000 paycheck already tonight. "I am coming here every Saturday from now on," he says. He gestures expansively at the scene—writhing women; hollering, money-throwing men. "Sponsored by BP!" he yells, laughing, then throws his arms around me and grabs my ass.

Upstairs, on the open-air deck, the supervisors and professional contractors drink. One comes over to talk; he calls me a Yankee when I don't get that when he says "animals" he means black guys. Another tells us about the crime-prone "monkeys." I have already stopped counting how many times I've heard the n-word on Grand Isle today.

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Back downstairs, the testosterone is still spewing. It's not just the men screaming at the now-topless girls rolling around trying to pin each other to the floor. An ex-Army Ranger so drunk he can hardly stand asks me if I have a boyfriend. When I lie and say that I do and he's right over there somewhere, the Ranger scowls and pushes me. I move to the other side of the ring, where some guy wraps a tight grip around my waist.

"You can have some of BP's money too if you let me make love to you," he says.

"I'm not a prostitute," I inform him, backing up to create some space between our pelvises, but he presses an insistent forearm harder into the small of my back.

"I'm not trying to play you like a prostitute," he says. "I'm just saying: Whatever it takes."

I extract myself with a firm fist to his chest. Two Grand Isle girls who are the only other non-strippers in the bar are trying to inch away from a teetering drunk who won't take his hands off them and is encouraging them to get in the ring. I turn around to see if an Interior Department firefighter I talked to earlier, who seems like a nice guy in that he offered to buy me dinner rather than offering money to have sex with him, is still behind me. Just in case. Because he's a hero he steps in and tells the teetering guy to back off.

"That's my wife," he says, towering over the drunk and pointing at one of the girls.

"I don't care," the teetering guy says. That's where it ends. The fireman has a thick four-inch-long scar behind his ear where he was once hit with a bottle; he doesn't start bar fights anymore. Which is a lucky thing for his coworkers, because he's a very buff Pawnee, and he's sick of them calling him "Tonto," "Chief," and "Indian Joe."

The near-desperate levels of racial and sexual aggression in this horde aren't what you usually get at a strip show in a bar. It feels more like a strip show in a prison yard. My friend says he's leaving because he can't bear to be here with all the stupidity and "stale testosterone" anymore. He returns from the bar across the street within 10 minutes. He walked in and walked right back out; it was the same scene. Last week, someone was stabbed there.

Upstairs, one of the cleanup supervisors announces that a nearby Canadian engineer hasn't had any pussy in 10 days, and could die. The guys say there's an old Vietnamese lady with a notebook full of available hookers' ages and races who wanders the cleanup workers' haunts, but she's not here right now. Anyway, the workers are forbidden from bringing hookers into the houses and hotel rooms their employers are putting them up in, under threat of being fired.

"How long are you going to be here?" I ask the contractor who's worried about the sexless Canadian.

"We aren't leaving till this is all clean," he answers, "we" being M-I SWACO, a cleanup contractor that just built a giant orange-pipe-jumble sand-washing machine on the beach (and which is not to be confused with the contractors who are doing only "window dressing" operations, as one of the other supervisors at the bar describes his job). M-I SWACO is not just going to polish the destruction off the surface. They're going to have oiled sand from all over the island brought in by the truckload, then dig out the contaminated layers, wash it, and put it back, at least 40 tons of sand an hour. They're going to save this place.

"We'll be here as long as oil keeps washing up," the contractor says.

"So..." I laugh sort of helplessly. "A year?"

"Three years..." he says. "Five years..."

"Hopefully forever," the guy next to him says. "I need this job if I can't work offshore anymore." Last week, the emcee that accompanies the oil wrestlers yelled into the microphone, "Let that oil gush! Let that money flow!" The workers—part of the new Grand Isle scenery of helicopters, Hummers, and National Guardsmen, serious people in uniforms and coveralls and work boots—the workers around the wrestling ring, drunk and blowing cash from jobs that might kill them, cheered.

[Siege]

Well, fuck me if that doesn't sound like something straight outta Apocalypse Now.

[Broomstick]

Which goes a long way to explaining why Boss hasn't been too eager to accept the tentative job offers from BP and take his crew (including me) down there. Sometimes, it ain't worth the money.

Of course, there's a lot to be said for not hanging out in bars, but the kind of men who take those sorts of jobs aren't generally known for intellectual pursuits. This is likely among the worst of the lot, the contractor grapevine is murmuring about everything from very civilized and tightly run shops to ... well, this sort of thing. But no one writes news stories about laborers behaving themselves, do they?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Of course, there's a lot to be said for not hanging out in bars, but the kind of men who take those sorts of jobs aren't generally known for intellectual pursuits. This is likely among the worst of the lot, the contractor grapevine is murmuring about everything from very civilized and tightly run shops to ... well, this sort of thing. But no one writes news stories about laborers behaving themselves, do they?

I'd guess this is probably about 2/3rds of all the workers. Then there's guys like me, who work 12-14 hours, eat, then go back to the trailer or motel and fall asleep with the TV on. Hooray for working in remote areas.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Well, fuck me if that doesn't sound like something straight outta Apocalypse Now.

Actually, with a bit of word substitution, the article would read just like you'd expect an article from the American West during the gold and silver rush days of the mid to late 1800s, and Alaska from 1897. Right now, you've got the dregs of society down there doing all the easy jobs for the easy money. When they complete the relief well and kill the gusher, the easy money will dry up and these men will disperse and move on to the next score, leaving behind the professionals to do the really hard stuff.

[Phantasee]

Shades of Fort Mac in there. Fort Mac, the place where the 24 hour drug testing clinic is above a liquor store and the majority of the hookers and drug dealers in town.

[FSTargetDrone]

BP CEO Hayward leaving?

Official: BP CEO Hayward being replaced over spill

By HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writer Harry R. Weber, Associated Press Writer – 34 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Gaffe-prone BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward — who incensed many on the Gulf Coast by saying he wanted his life back as they struggled with the fallout from the company's massive oil spill — will be replaced, a senior U.S. government official said Sunday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an announcement had not been made, was briefed on the decision by a senior BP official late last week.

The government official did not know who will replace Hayward or when it will happen. One of the most likely successors is BP Managing Director Bob Dudley, who is currently overseeing the British company's spill response.

Earlier Sunday, BP spokesman Toby Odone seemed to downplay media speculation about Hayward's departure, saying he "remains BP's chief executive, and he has the confidence of the board and senior management."

BP's board would have to approve a change in company leadership. An official announcement could come as early as Monday.

It's been more than three months since an offshore drilling rig operated by BP exploded off Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers and setting off the spill. A temporary plug has stopped oil from gushing for more than a week now, but before that the busted well had spewed anywhere from 94 million to 184 million gallons into the Gulf.

Since the explosion, Hayward has made several highly publicized gaffes. Among them: going to a yacht race while oil washed up on Gulf shores, and uttering the now-infamous: "I want my life back" line.

Oppenheimer & Co. senior analyst Fadel Gheit said in an interview Sunday that it was too bad Hayward's career was derailed by the spill, but "unfortunately he became a sacrificial lamb in a politically charged world."

Dudley would be well-suited to take over, Gheit said, describing him as even-tempered and a good delegator. It's never an easy time to instill new leadership in a company, though, he noted.

"I'm not sure if removing Tony Hayward is going to throw BP's problems away," Gheit said.

The company has already spent roughly $4 billion on its response to the crisis. The final tally could be in the tens of billions of dollars.

News that the CEO will depart came as no surprise to people living along the Gulf.

Patrick Shay, 43, sat on a porch swing of his cottage in Grand Isle on Sunday, his front yard filled with small, white crosses, each bearing the name of sealife or ways of life the oil spill has killed.

"He seems like a pretty self-absorbed person, so I'm not surprised to hear he would walk away in the middle of all this," he said. "If anything it will help. They need to get him out of the way and get this cleaned up."

In New Orleans, Chris Hearn, a 23-year-old security guard, said what's important is getting the oil stopped permanently.

"It doesn't matter who's in charge," he said. "As long as they clean it up, I really could care less. They just need to get it cleaned up because it's affecting all of us down here."

Crews trying to plug the leaky well for good had to stop work late last week because of the threat from Tropical Storm Bonnie, but the effort was back on track as skies cleared Sunday.

A drill rig is expected to reconnect at around midnight to the relief tunnel that will be used to pump in mud and cement to seal the well, and drilling could resume in the next few days.

Completion of the relief well that is the best chance to permanently stop the oil now looks possible by mid-August, but retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the spill, said he wouldn't hesitate to order another evacuation based on forecasts similar to the ones for Bonnie.

"We have no choice but to start well ahead of time if we think the storm track is going to bring gale force winds, which are 39 mph or above, anywhere close to well site," Allen said.

Allen said officials will spend the next day determining how Bonnie, which did no real damage on shore, affected the area. Oil may have migrated north to Mississippi Sound, he said, and officials are checking to see if boom that was protecting sensitive marshlands was pushed ashore.

Allen said he had not heard whether Hayward is being replaced.

"I've got no knowledge of the inner workings of BP," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Tamara Lush, David Dishneau and Greg Bluestein in New Orleans, Mary Foster in Grand Isle, La., and Emily Fredrix in New York contributed to this report.

Good riddance to this stuffed-shirt, if this is true.

[eion]

Good riddance to this stuffed-shirt, if this is true.

You realize he's probably going to walk away with millions in severance and will probably get positions on some oil industry boards that pay even more than his CEO gig did, right?

What they should have done is taken a vote of the board and tied his salary to how many barrels of oil he personally cleans up. Say £100,000 - £250,000 a barrel.

No heavy equipment allowed, just a shovel, a bucket, a strainer, and some absorbent pads.

And no safety gear, just like all the clean-up workers BP is hiring.

Showing him the door is literally the least BP could do.

[FSTargetDrone]

You realize he's probably going to walk away with millions in severance and will probably get positions on some oil industry boards that pay even more than his CEO gig did, right?

What they should have done is taken a vote of the board and tied his salary to how many barrels of oil he personally cleans up. Say £100,000 - £250,000 a barrel.

No heavy equipment allowed, just a shovel, a bucket, a strainer, and some absorbent pads.

And no safety gear, just like all the clean-up workers BP is hiring.

Showing him the door is literally the least BP could do.

And that is part of the problem, the (quite exorbitant) severance package he will doubtless receive. But he will get paid whether he stays or goes.

[Sharp-kun]

Who really cares if the guy at the top goes. Sure the buck stops with him and he can shape policy, but it's just an attempt to draw a line under this that will probably let lower level players who had far more knowlege of and involvement in the problems get away.

The CEO isn't the guy on the rig who said "ignore this" or the guy he reported to that thought it was fine to do so.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Actually, Hayward is being Exiled to Siberia, granted, in the mild Tsarist fashion, but it's probably the best we can realistically hope for that he spends the next fifteen years freezing his ass off running Russian oil wells which are so badly built that his incompetent management policies cannot actually make their environmental record worse.

TNK-BP profits soar as Hayward awaits Russian exile

By Stuart Williams (AFP) – 4 hours ago

MOSCOW — TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture of BP and one of the British group's crown jewels, revealed soaring profits on Tuesday as it emerged that outgoing BP chief Tony Hayward was set to become a director at the firm.

TNK-BP -- owned 50 percent by the embattled oil giant and 50 percent by a group of Russian billionaires -- said first-half profits jumped more than 20 percent to 2.4 billion dollars (1.86 billion euros) on rising production.

The results underlined the profitability of TNK-BP, Russia's third-biggest oil firm, on the day its British parent announced a loss of 16.9 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2010 after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP also announced on Tuesday that as a part of the management reshuffle prompted by its oil spill, the widely-mocked Hayward would be nominated as a non-executive director of TNK-BP.

"Siberia awaits Hayward," headlined business daily Vedomosti, referring to the Soviet and Tsarist practice of exiling political prisoners to Russia's freezing East. TNK-BP operates huge oil fields in Siberia.

His nomination is the latest twist in the short but turbulent seven year history of TNK-BP, which almost imploded during a venomous shareholder conflict but has performed solidly over the last year.

"During the first six months of 2010, TNK-BP continued the track record of strong operating and financial performance," said one of its Russian owners, billionaire Mikhail Fridman, who is acting TNK-BP chief executive.

"This is the 11th successive quarter of production growth... This set of results once again confirms the company's growth potential going forward," he added.

Revenues for the first half rose to 20.7 billion dollars from 14.5 billion the year earlier. Net profits rose to 2.4 billion dollars from 2.0 billion in the same period last year.

For the second quarter in 2010, net profits were 1.16 billion dollars, it said.

Oil and gas production in the first half of 2010 increased by 4.5 percent to 1.743 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) compared to the first half of 2009.

The 2008 management dispute saw its then chief executive Robert Dudley accused of damaging the Russian shareholders' interests and effectively forced to leave Russia.

However the dispute was patched up after Dudley's departure and the shareholders agreed to appoint Maxim Barsky TNK-BP chief executive effective from January 1, 2011, with Fridman taking the reins in the interim.

Ironically, BP announced on Tuesday that Dudley would be replacing Hayward as the overall BP chief executive.

German Khan, one of Russian co-shareholders, known collectively as Alfa Access-Renova (AAR), said they "fully supported" Dudley's appointment as BP chief executive.

The shareholder conflict "was not of a personal nature but of differences of approach in management," he said, according to RIA Novosti. "I have sent Bob my congratulations."

There has been speculation that BP could even sell its stake in TNK-BP, a move that would rake in an estimated 15 billion dollars in proceeds and at single stroke improve its financial situation.

Analysts have said the Russian gas giant Gazprom and its largest oil firm Rosneft would be interested purchasers but TNK-BP has dismissed such a scenario.

Late last month Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, the government's point man on energy matters and close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, met Hayward in Moscow for a meeting whose subject remained a mystery.

Dudley and Hayward are both planning to visit Russia to meet with the government and business partners, a TNK-BP spokesman told the Interfax news agency.

TNK-BP's Russian shareholders were not discussing a buy-out of BP's stake, Khan said.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

[Temujin]

Profits? And yet here they're whining:

BP to emerge 'smaller and wiser'

27 July 2010 Last updated at 10:50 ET

Tony Hayward, Carl-Henric Svanberg and Bob Dudley BP's outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward (l) appeared alongside the chairman and his successor Bob Dudley (r)

BP will emerge from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis a smaller and wiser company, according to the man who is due to take over the reins.

Bob Dudley, currently in charge of BP's clean-up operation, will replace Tony Hayward as chief executive in October.

Mr Dudley described the oil spill as a terrible tragedy from which the company and the industry would learn a lot.

Earlier, BP reported a record $17bn (£11bn) loss, having set aside $32bn to cover the costs of the spill.
US Oil Spill

* Timeline: BP oil spill
* Profile: Bob Dudley
* Tony Hayward's gaffes
* Profile: Tony Hayward

The loss for the three months to June was the largest quarterly loss recorded by a British company.

"[BP] will be smaller and financially, it will grow," Mr Dudley told ABC's Good Morning America programme.

"We are going to share our learnings from this, it's no doubt going to change the oil and gas industry all around the globe as a result of it."
'Not negligent'

Mr Hayward, who is leaving by mutual consent, is likely to retain a role within the company. BP plans to nominate him as a non-executive director of its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP.

BP also announced it would increase its asset sales over the next 18 months to $30bn, a total that includes the $7bn-worth earmarked for sale last week.
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Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg: BP still in 'grand shape' despite record losses

The $32.2bn cost of the clean-up includes the $20bn already set aside under pressure from the US government for compensation claims.

"That estimate is also based on our belief that we are not grossly negligent," BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told the BBC's business editor Robert Peston.

"Of course we will not know precisely because it depends on how many claims are coming in and [other] things that could happen."

But he insisted that the company was in good financial shape, with strong cashflow.
BP quarterly

"It's of course a huge loss that overshadows everything else, but the underlying performance of the company is actually strong," he told the BBC.

"There is no worry about our financial position and our ability to get through this. It's of course a tragedy and it has large consequences, but we have no doubt that we will be able to rebuild the company," he said.

Stripping out the oil spill costs, BP made a second quarter profit, on a replacement cost basis, of $5bn, compared with $2.9bn for the second quarter of 2009.

The announcements were welcomed by most investors for their clear-cut approach.

Peter Hitchens, of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers, said: "It's basically a kitchen sink job...

"I think it's the board trying to wipe the slate clean."
'Milestone'
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

It is very difficult to describe a $17bn loss for three months of trading as a sparkling performance. But for BP it could have been a lot worse”

End Quote Robert Peston BBC business editor

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Tony Hayward said that, now oil had stopped spilling from the Macondo well, it was a good time to leave his post.

"With the leak now capped, we have reached a significant milestone. This provides a firm basis to reshape the company," he said.

On Monday, the BBC revealed that 53-year old Mr Hayward will receive a year's salary plus benefits, together worth more than £1m.

He will also be entitled to draw an annual pension of £600,000 once he reaches the age of 55.

Mr Hayward's pension pot is valued at about £11m and he will keep his rights to shares under a long-term performance scheme which could - depending on BP's stock market recovery - eventually be worth several million pounds.

Carl-Henric Svanberg said Mr Hayward would be missed.

"The BP board is deeply saddened to lose a CEO whose success over some three years in driving the performance of the company was so widely and deservedly admired," he said.

The handling of the explosion on the drilling rig off Louisiana on 20 April, which killed 11 workers and triggered the worst oil spill in the US, raised questions about Mr Hayward's leadership.

[Darth Nostril]

And in the Times it's reported that BP want to start drilling again.
I'd provide a link but the Times has started charging for access to their website.

[Darth Nostril]

Pretty much any news source says the same thing, they only change the anecdotal quote from a loocal at the end.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... le1664361/