By Michael Baxter 3 Jun 2010 [1 Comment | 375 views]
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It wasn’t exactly a tactful comment. While suffering a grilling from reporters in Louisiana this weekend, BP supremo Tony Hayward said: “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back.” Oh dear, that one didn’t go down at all well. What with BP as about as popular with the American public as banks at the moment, his “get my life” jibe was even less funny than the one the former UK chief secretary (that is, the one before last, ie the one we had before the election) cracked. He said: “Dear Chief Secretary, I am afraid to tell you the money has run out.” (Actually I thought the Liam Byrne comment was quite funny – Ed.) Now our Tone has apologised, saying: “Those words don’t represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don’t represent the hearts of the people of BP.”
He then added: and while I am at it, I would also like to apologise for the dividend payment we are planning to make to BP shareholders. After all, British pensioners who have got a lot invested in BP have lives, too. Okay, Mr Hayward didn’t really add that second comment. But he might as well have done. Despite all the havoc that has washed upon the US shores, BP is still planning to pay its shareholders dividends.
In the scheme of things, BP paying dividends may rank alongside CEOs at GM, Ford and Chrysler turning up in their private jets to meet Uncle Barack to ask for money. Or maybe the BP dividend plan is worse than that, and ranks alongside bailed out banks paying out dividends. It is just that not everyone sees it that way. Writing in The Telegraph, Damian Reece said: “But BP shareholders also rely on the Gulf for about 25 per cent of their investment and it’s still in the interests of the US for a better and stronger BP to emerge. That will require continuing investor support. So Tony Hayward is doing the wise thing in planning a presentation for investors later in the week… I expect the stockmarket to be one of the few places Hayward will get close to a rational hearing, along with the UK press which has been pretty balanced.”
What was that: US media and the popular backlash against BP not rational? Whatever next.
Amazing how Obama can blame BP before he knows exactly what happened and why. Typical of US politics ‘find somebody quickly to blame and threaten them with extinction’ The fact that BP are the only company with the expertise to drill for oil at such depths and did so to satisfy the US never ending demand for more and more of the black stuff, appears to be of no consequence. In new technologies there are always risks and I do not underestimate for one moment the consequences of the spill, but lets get real at least about the reasons for it before sinking one of the greatest Companies in the world.
Maybe this is opportunistic on the part of the US, cheap way to acquire the expertise ‘innit’.