BP PLC's (BP) new Chief Executive Bob Dudley launched Monday a robust defense of his company's response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this summer, accusing the media and some people in the oil industry of fearmongering and a rush to judgment that exacerbated the crisis.
BP PLC's (BP) new Chief Executive Bob Dudley launched Monday a robust
defense of his company's response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this summer,
accusing the media and some people in the oil industry of fearmongering and a
rush to judgment that exacerbated the crisis.
Dudley also reaffirmed that BP won't quit its businesses in the U.S. and
intends to keep drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico despite the damage
to its reputation.
BP's new boss, giving his first speech on the company's home soil, said he was
shocked by the "protracted media and political firestorm" the oil spill
ignited, which at its height "threatened the very existence of our
company.
"[There was] a great rush to judgment by a fair number of observers before
the full facts could possibly be known," he said. "I watched graphic
projections of oil swirling around the Gulf, around
Florida
,
across and around
Bermuda
to
England
,"
he said, none of which came to pass.
Notably,
Dudley
singled out for criticism "some in our
industry" who joined the clamor against BP.
Many other major oil companies operating in the
Gulf
of Mexico
--ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell PLC
(RDSB) and Chevron Corp. (CVX)--have sought to distance themselves from BP and
criticized the design used in the Macondo well that triggered the disaster. BP's
internal investigation concluded that well design played no part in the Macondo
blow out.
"I hope for everyone's sake that over the next months and years we can
reach a balanced and informed judgment about what happened," Dudley said,
adding he was confident BP can win back the trust of people in the U.S.
"I didn't become chief executive of BP in order to walk away from the U.S.
BP won't be quitting America," he told the annual conference of the
Confederation of British Industry in London. "There is too much at stake,
both for BP and the
U.S.
"
BP's relationship with the
U.S.
authorities has already started to improve, he said. "The scale of our
response, much of it going beyond the demands of legal compliance, has not gone
unnoticed," he said.
Dudley
acknowledged the risks of deep water drilling can
never be fully eliminated, but said operations can continue safely and BP
should remain a part of the industry.
"Deep waters are becoming an increasingly important source of energy to
fuel the global economy," he said. "We are one of only a handful of
companies with the financial and technological strengths to undertake
developments in these difficult geographies.
"Until this incident, over 5,000 wells had been drilled in over 1,000 feet
of water with no serious incident,"
Dudley
said.
"BP had drilled safely in deep waters of the
Gulf
of Mexico
for 20 years...there are difficult balances to
strike, but we cannot afford to shy away from risk."
Dudley
acknowledged mistakes and a lack of preparedness.
"A subsea blowout of the kind that happened was seen by us and the entire
industry as a very low-probability event. We thought we had the appropriate
mitigations in place," he said.
However, BP has learned a tremendous amount from the
Gulf
of Mexico
disaster that can enhance safety in the future, he
said.
"The silver lining of the event is the significant and sustained advance
in industry preparedness," he said. BP aims to become the best in the oil
industry at managing risk has been consulting with experts from the nuclear and
chemical industries to improve BP's approach to safety, he said.
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