by
Ravi Somaiya: June 02, 2010
Joe Raedle / Getty Images: On May 28, Hayward points to the site of the gulf oil spill.
There is a long and awkward history of corporate leaders saying the wrong thing when their companies are facing criticism. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein responded to his company’s role in contributing to the recent financial crisis by suggesting he was doing “
God’s work.” But BP CEO Tony Hayward, whose company
just hired a former spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney to help handle the media, has outdone even Blankfein in his unfortunate comments since the company’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up on April 20. The blast
killed 11 people and sent thick, rust-colored oil billowing into the Gulf of Mexico, destroying natural habitats and devastating the coastal economy.
BP initially estimated that between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil were gushing into the gulf each day. The current consensus pegs the figure at between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels. At 44 days in, it is already the biggest spill in U.S. history, and with no signs of a quick solution to halt the flow of crude, it’s dwarfing the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.
Among Hayward’s bizarre statements since the accident:
On April 29, The New York Times reported that Hayward, apparently exasperated, turned to fellow executives in his London office and asked, What the hell did we do to deserve this?” (A possible answer might be the company’s 760 safety violations over the last three years. ExxonMobil, in contrast, has had just one.) read more
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