BP CEO Tony Hayward is expected to face US Congress today

BP CEO Tony Hayward, the energy company executive who has become the face of the mammoth Gulf of Mexico oil spill, is expected to face a tough grilling by Congress today.

In a letter to Hayward earlier this week, Committee of Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said an investigation by the committee had found that before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, “BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure.”

The congressmen said Hayward, who met with President Obama Tuesday, should come prepared to address BP’s “questionable decisions.”

In written testimony prepared for the hearing, Hayward said “full answers” on the cause of the explosion won’t come out until the conclusions of investigations by U.S. government agencies and by BP itself.

“I understand people want a simple answer about why this happened and who is to blame. The truth, however, is that this is a complex accident, caused by an unprecedented combination of failures,” he said. “A number of companies are involved, including BP, and it is simply too early to understand the cause. There is still extensive work to do.”

The company, he said, is concentrating on stopping the flow of oil by drilling two relief wells, as well as deploying equipment that has recently allowed BP to collect 15,000 barrels of oil per day. BP expects to increase its collection further in the next few days through the use of other equipment, he said.

Hayward said the company has paid out more than $90 million on damage claims and is expediting payments of $16 million more this week to businesses hurt by the disaster. The company has spent $1.5 billion on the oil spill cleanup thus far, he said, “and we will not stop until the job is done.”

The CEO acknowledged, however, that there’s little he can say to quell public anger about the spill.

“I hear the concerns, fears, frustrations — and anger — being voiced across the country. I understand it, and I know that these sentiments will continue until the leak is stopped, and until we prove through our actions that we will do the right thing,” he said. “Our actions will mean more than words, and we know that, in the end, we will be judged by the quality of our response. Until this happens, no words will be satisfying.”

Today will no doubt be an uncomfortable day for the 53-year-old Hayward, who has been excoriated in recent weeks not only for his role as head of the company blamed for the spill, but also for his public statements, including the now-infamous, “I’d like my life back,” — a comment Hayward made while explaining his desire to quickly resolve the disaster, which killed 11 men and devastated Gulf shores.

Hayward’s life before the Deepwater Horizon explosion was an enviable one. Last year, the British native’s compensation totaled $14.3 million, according to the research firm Equilar, some of which he’s spent on vacations sailing through the tropics and skiing in Vail, Colorado, with his wife, a former BP geophysicist, and their two children. He’s also an avid sports fan and enjoys watching games of rugby, soccer and cricket.

“I don’t work weekends. … And I take all my holidays,” he once told a BP publication.

But Hayward’s defenders point out that while the often tie-less CEO has a noticeably laid-back demeanor, he asserted his commitment to safety long before the Gulf spill. In another past interview, Hayward recalled an incident that killed a young BP employee in Venezuela. Hayward attended his funeral, where he was confronted by the young man’s mother. “At the end of the service his mother came up to me and beat me on the chest,” he said. “‘Why did you let it happen?’ she asked. It changed the way I think about safety. Leaders must make the safety of all who work for them their top priority.”

BP’s leader for more than three years, Hayward took over the company at an inauspicious time. In 2007, BP was still dealing with the aftermath of a 2005 Texas refinery explosion that killed 15 workers, its profits were plunging thanks to weak U.S. gas prices and other problems and its last CEO, the highly-respected John Browne, had resigned amid a salacious scandal: A judge had found Browne lied in court over a long-running gay relationship with a Canadian student.

While he kept mum on the Browne scandal, Hayward was vocal and aggressive in his efforts to turn around BP, both from a financial and safety standpoint. Under his tenure, BP simplified its company structure and slashed thousands of jobs — moves that BP officials insisted did not compromise BP’s increased focus on safety.

“What I learned was that we’d become far too introspective at the top. In particular, we weren’t listening to the operating people on safety and reliability,” Hayward told a BP company magazine in 2008. His predecessor, he said, built “a fantastic company. … Our task now is to demonstrate that we can run it.”

Hayward almost never got the chance to work for BP, let alone run it.

His beginnings were humble: Hayward was the oldest of seven from Slough, England, a blue-collar town that serves as the setting for the British version of “The Office.” After he earned a degree at a midtier college, his initial application to BP was rejected.

A Ph.D. in geology from Edinburgh University prompted BP to take a second look. Hayward joined the company in 1982 at age 25, beginning his career there as a rig geologist in the North Sea, where he helped discover a new oil field.

“Drilling into the reservoir for the first time at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning 1982 (was) one of my better Christmas presents,” he recalled in a speech before a Scottish oil club in 2006.

Hayward went on to work in seven different countries — his daughter, the younger of Hayward’s two children, was born in Colombia — and hold a number of different roles. Browne took notice of Hayward at a 1990 BP conference in Arizona and Hayward soon became part of a group of young, promising executives nicknamed the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Hayward drew from his geological expertise to help BP expand its oil reserves.

“When Hayward came in, he was felt to be a pretty good guy from the point of view of doing the most important thing that oil companies worry about: trying to find more oil to add to the reserve list,” said Paul Hodges, chairman of International eChem, a London-based chemical advisory group.

Hayward continued BP’s global expansion earlier this year by shepherding his biggest deal as CEO: the $7 billion purchase of assets, including off-shore oil blocks in Brazil, from a U.S. energy company in March.

Hayward knows that BP can gain an edge over smaller energy companies through big, complex international projects, said David Aron, the managing director of London-based Petroleum Development Consultants.

Aron, who has worked with BP in the past, said that Hayward’s willingness to admit shortcomings may ultimately hurt him the eyes of the American public, particularly those accustomed to hearing from less modest CEOs. Hayward recently admitted that BP “did not have the tools you would want in your tool kit” to cope with the Gulf disaster.

“It’s actually true, but maybe it’s not the thing to say to an American audience,” Aron said.

Hayward made enemies in the United States a month before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, when he criticized the continued construction of coal plants in a speech before a D.C. think tank. Hayward said Congress should promote natural gas use, which emits less carbon than coal.

In response, the United Mine Workers of America called for a boycott of BP, which is one of the world’s largest natural gas producers. In a message sent to its members, the labor union said Hayward was “advocating putting an end to coal, the jobs that go with it and the retiree pensions and health care that coal pays for.”

Today, the adversity Hayward faces is wider-ranging and, from his family’s point of view, more frightening. The British media has reported that local police have launched an operation to protect the Haywards after the family was targeted with hate mail and upsetting phone calls.

“Members of my family have had nasty phone calls and we have also had mail from groups,” Hayward’s wife, Maureen, told The Daily Telegraph. “Tony is obviously away and we are miles away from him so it’s upsetting.”

It’s unclear whether Hayward will be able to weather the fallout from the Gulf disaster with his job intact.

Phil Weiss, a senior energy analyst at Argus Research, said he believes Hayward will be shown the door once the spill is contained.

“One of the things people thought he was going to do was to help clean up the company’s operations and make it safer,” Weiss said. “And yet here we have the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history under his watch. … It doesn’t sound to me like he’s done what he was expected to do.”

This entry was posted on June 17, 2010 at 8:20 am and is filed under .Environmental News, News, Political News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.