Daily Telegraph: For conspiracy theorists, this has always been the end game. A catastrophic oil spill. A political pummelling from President Barack Obama. And then, when BP is suitably softened up, a swoop from Exxon with a £100bn bid, providing an American solution to a very British problem.
…any move by an American predator for BP would be political dynamite…
By Helia Ebrahimi
Published: 9:01PM BST 11 Jul 2010
The theory is so seductive that it has seeped through Washington ever since it became clear just how damaging the Gulf of Mexico spill was going be to what was, back in April, Britain’s biggest company.
How could Exxon, or indeed its smaller US rival, Chevron, resist? Here was one of their biggest competitors in meltdown, its value almost halving in a matter of months and the reputation of its chief executive Tony Hayward as ruined as the Deepwater Horizon rig.