Embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward defied expectations and didn’t resign Monday. Instead, he’s being shuffled off to Russia, where he will direct BP’s role in TNK-BP, a joint venture considered one of BP’s plum projects . Hayward may appear to be escaping culpability for leading a wreck less business that caused the oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico 2010, and then botching the oil spill response. But before he flies to Moscow, some United States senators would like to ask him some personal questions about a BP-Libya oil deal they think influenced the release of a convicted terrorist.
Tony Hayward’s Siberian sojourn
Tony Hayward will step down as BPs CEO in October. The New York Daily News ran an Associated Press report that said Hayward will probably be swapped out as BP’s CEO by Robert Dudley. Dudley is the man who changed Hayward as BP’s director of the oil spill response. The board of BP’s Russian venture TNK-BP now has a seat for Hayward. The fact that Dudley, who once held the seat Hayward is about to warm, had to flee Russia in 2008 adds a bit of irony.
Will Hayward fare better at TK-BP than Dudley?
BP thinks more of Tony Heyward than most American’s and American politicians, if his new role swimming with Russian oil sharks is any indication. Accounting for 25 percent of its total production, the Washington Post reports how the TNK-BP venture is one of BP’s crown jewels. But BP’s Russian post could be a problem, as Robert Dudley’s experience shows. Dudley was forced to leave Russia after a fight with Russian shareholders.
Senators think Hayward bargained terrorists for oil
Tony Hayward may be changing addresses, but senators Bob Menendez and Kirsten Gillibrand won’t give up calling him before Congress. The New York Observer reports that the senators could be holding a July 29 hearing to the release of the Lockerbie bomber and told the press they want to hear from Hayward. The senators have been pushing British officials for weeks to conduct a full investigation of the links between a BP-Libya oil deal and the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset al-Megrahi. Menendez said that during BP’s negotiations with Libya during the deal Hayward may have played a role.
Additional reading
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