Gulf Oil Spill Update : Hayward out, Dudley and Willis in as American faces of BP.
A day after British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward deftly defied, dodged, and deflected Congressional inquirers, speaking much and saying little to representatives and the media in a five-hour grilling on Capitol Hill, company spokesmen announced that Robert Dudley will take-over day-to-day management of the environmental and economic cataclysm in the Gulf. Dudley, a BP managing director who cut his corporate teeth in the oil industry, is presumed to have more first-hand experience and technical knowledge. In a similarly strategic move, BP changed its advertising strategy, withdrawing many of Hayward’s commercials, replacing them with statements by Darryl Willis, a friendlier, more credible face.
Born and raised in Mississippi, Dudley brings home-grown charm to the gig, something the little British schoolboy consistently failed to deliver. BP handlers expect that Dudley will hold the company’s line while credibly assuring his neighbours that everything will be just fine, and the company will provide for lost livelihoods, ruined health, oil-clogged diesel engines on expensive fishing boats, and the multitude of horrors the BP splurge has brought upon Gulf Coast residents. Similarly home-grown, Willis, who has managed BP’s claims operation for the last month, lost his home during hurricane Katrina and has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Gulf coast residents all his life.
Hayward continues enraging Gulf coast residents.
“Maybe obnoxiousness is just his super-power,” one Mississippi resident suggested, hearing that Hayward had devoted his Saturday to BP yacht racing. “But, really, could he possibly have been any more insensitive? Could he have delivered a bigger slap in the face? Could he seriously have planned and rehearsed a bigger jack-ass manoeuvre?”
While the Gulf oil splurge has grown from dribble to drama to disaster to dawn of the apocalypse, Hayward has chalked-up an impressive series of gaffes, offenses, snubs, solecisms, lies, evasions, and flagrantly elitist blunders of the first magnitude. On Thursday, he left a Congressional committee fuming after he failed to answer some of their simplest question and deftly evaded answering some of their most difficult challenges. In one heated exchange, a Congressman asked, “Will you give us a roster of BP’s Gulf contractors?” The committee and gallery waited for a simple yes—even a nod would have satisfied. Instead they heard Hayward intone, and repeat, “We will endeavour to…” American English translation: “Fat chance.”
Daryll Willis,
How does it feel to do the bidding of a company that has been so deceptive? You are attempting to justify the actions of a company which has deliberately deceived the public and done great harm beside the oil spill. It’s difficult to understand your moral character and the measures you are willing to take for a pay check. You are taking pay to perform for company that has dubious integrity.
Leo Lampeter
We appreciate your comments, and we find that many of your fellow citizens along the Gulf Coast share your sentiments about both Darryl Willis and Robert Burke. Trying to conform with the canon of journalists’ ethics, we tend to confine our opinions to the occasional snarky adjective. We are struggling to remain neutral, objective, and disinterested in the face of developments that frequently rub people’s consciences raw. We will comment, however, that for all of the executives’ talk about “transparency” and “full disclosure,” we find them consistently hostile to the press, far less than forthcoming with information that ought to be matters of public record, and generally recalcitrant about responding to our inquiries. Their representatives tend to persist in making happy noises without telling us much of anything.
- Kieryn (writer and editor)