The millionaire CEO of foreign oil giant BP, Tony Hayward, is upset at the inconvenience caused to him by his company’s devastation of the Gulf of Mexico. BP’s offshore drilling explosion claimed 11 lives on April 20, and has since spewed 20 to 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. At least 491 birds, 227 turtles and 27 mammals, including dolphins, have been found dead. On Sunday, immediately after apologizing, Hayward then complained about the effect of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on his personal life, saying “I would like my life back“:
We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.
Watch it:
Hayward, who pulled in $4.5 million last year, has a record of insensitive comments about the greatest environmental disaster in the United States:
“What the hell did we do to deserve this?” [New York Times, 4/30/10]
“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” [Guardian, 5/14/10]
“I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.” [Sky News, 5/18/10]
There are no indications that the Obama administration intends to remove Hayward or his company from running the cleanup effort, however. “I trust Tony Hayward,” Admiral Thad Allen, the top federal official overseeing the Gulf disaster, told CNN last week.
Hard as it may be for Hayward to believe, the residents of the Louisiana coast may want their nightmare to end even more than BP. “I was just sitting here thinking our way of life is over. It’s the end, the apocalypse,” fisherman Tom Young of Plaquemines Parish told reporters today. (HT Eschaton)
The millionaire CEO of foreign oil giant BP, Tony Hayward, is upset at the inconvenience caused to him by his company’s devastation of the Gulf of Mexico. BP’s offshore drilling explosion claimed 11 lives on April 20, and has since spewed 20 to 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. At least 491 birds, 227 turtles and 27 mammals, including dolphins, have been found dead. On Sunday, immediately after apologizing, Hayward then complained about the effect of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on his personal life, saying “I would like my life back“:
I was hearing an intersting take from a non-partisan person today. All thig Boycott BP thing is mess and it's only going to directly hurt the private franchise holders of the stored and stations. BP made a mistake, they've taken full responsibility and the apology should be accepted. They're doing eveything, spending millions to get this fixed. The damage done to their name may cost them much more in money.Their stock has already dropped. Have we stopped flying american ailines because a plane crashed? Mistakes happen and they are beign help accountable but come on,boycotting BP is not the way to go.
Proof is showing that it wasn't a mistake,but in fact negligence.
Several weeks before the Gulf oil explosion, a key piece of safety equipment – the blowout preventer – was damaged.
As the Times of London reports:
[Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, and one of the last workers to leave the doomed rig] claimed that the blowout preventer was then damaged when a crewman accidentally moved a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force. Pieces of rubber were found in the drilling fluid, which he said implied damage to a crucial seal. But a supervisor declared the find to be “not a big deal”, Mr Williams alleged.
UC Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea told 60 Minutes that a damaged blowout preventer not only may lead to a catastrophic accident like the Gulf oil spill, but leads to inaccurate pressure readings, so that the well operator doesn’t know the real situation, and cannot keep the rig safe.
Bea also said that – despite the damage – BP ordered the rig operator to ignore an even more critical safety measure. Specifically, BP ordered the rig operator to remove the “drilling mud” – a heavy liquid used to keep oil and gas from escaping – before the well was sealed.
According to Bea, the accident would not have occurred had drilling mud been used.
