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BP boss Hayward to step down in October

Other News Materials 27 July 2010 10:11 (UTC +04:00)
BP Plc chief executive Tony Hayward is to step down October 1 and leave the energy giant's board by the end of the year, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, as the company struggles to salvage its reputation after the biggest oil spill in US history.
BP boss Hayward to step down in October

BP Plc chief executive Tony Hayward is to step down October 1 and leave the energy giant's board by the end of the year, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, as the company struggles to salvage its reputation after the biggest oil spill in US history, DPA reported.

The 53-year-old embattled chief executive's departure follows intense criticism of his handling of the catastrophic spill caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.

BP's board is expected to announce early Tuesday that it has picked Robert Dudley, 54, a US citizen who grew up in Mississippi - part of the region suffering ecological and environmental damage from the disaster. He took the lead from Hayward in handling the company's efforts to contain the oil spill in mid-June.

Dudley is known as a straight-talking executive and has the reputation of a "fixer" at BP, after having led its delicate - and at times turbulent - TNK-BP joint venture with Russia.

Hayward might get to keep his pension fund, worth 10.84 million pounds (16.8 million dollars) at the end of last year, and a year's salary of about 1 million pounds, Bloomberg financial news reported early Tuesday.

Hayward was relieved of the day-to-day handling of the enormous response to the oil spill two months into the disaster, after a series of gaffes.

At a Congressional hearing in Washington last month, US lawmakers charged that Hayward paid no attention to increasing reports of safety problems with the deepwater well.

Hayward's image was further damaged after photographs of him taking a break to attend yacht races incited outrage among residents of the Gulf coast and prompted criticism from the White House.

"Well, to quote Tony Hayward, he's got his life back, as he would say," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said then, echoing earlier remarks by Hayward that he wanted his life back after weeks devoted to the disaster. The comments had been called insensitive to the families of the 11 workers who died in the explosion and to others hurt by the spill.

Another of Hayward's gaffes was to call the spill "relatively tiny" in a "very big ocean." According to estimates by US scientists, the ruptured well has been spewing between 35,000-60,000 barrels of oil each day, for more than three months.

BP is to release its second-quarter results Tuesday, and is expected to announce a record loss, the BBC reported, citing it as among the biggest in British corporate history. The company will have earmarked up to 30 billion dollars on its balance sheet for repair costs, compensation claims and fines related to the spill - generating an overall deficit for the second quarter, the first for BP in several decades.

BP is expected to begin permanently sealing off the leaking well as early as next week, the US government said Monday.

BP resumed its efforts to permanently plug the leak on Monday, after a four-day halt to its operations brought on by a storm that came through the region.

Even once the flow is stopped, oil could be washing up on US shores for weeks. It took four to six weeks after the initial rupture on April 20 for oil to begin reaching the coast.

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