Tony Hayward, who became the face of BP's flailing efforts to contain the massive Gulf oil spill, will step down as chief executive in October and be offered a job with the company's joint venture in Russia, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.
Looks like BP reads Climate Progress after all (see "Time to fire BP CEO Tony Hayward).
Seriously, though, while Hayward tried to blame his predecessor and pretty much everybody else for this disaster — see Is BP the Goldman Sachs of Big Oil? CEO Hayward says to fellow executives: "What the hell did we do to deserve this?" — let's remember that even though Hayward became CEO in May 2007, Hayward became "Chief Executive of exploration and production in January 2003." Hayward created whatever safety culture the explorers and producers have that led to the disaster. As CEO, Hayward also put the company through ruthless cost-cutting that certainly lead to fatal corner cutting (see"The three causes of BP's Titanic oil disaster: Recklessness, Arrogance, and Hubris").
Now here's where things get weird — no, I mean, really weird — Hayward is apparently switching jobs with BP's Bob Dudley and, as Business Insider reports, "Dudley was the head of Russian operations before leaving in disgrace":
In 2003, Dudley became CEO of TNK-BP, BP's joint venture in Russia along with Russian company AAR, a group of four Russian billionaire oligarchs. Over the years, tensions mounted between BP and the oligarchs. According to news reports from 2008, the oligarchs wanted more bang for their buck in the form of higher returns on their investment, while BP wanted to invest more profit back into the company.The 50-50 venture became a fierce power struggle, with BP executives alleging harassment by both AAR and the Russian government, charges that the Russians denied. According to one report in the Times, Dudley was regularly sweeping his office for bugs and taking phone calls on his balcony to avoid being recorded.
It came to the point, in July 2008, where Dudley fled the country. His visa was set to expire, and it seemed that the Russians weren't keen on renewing. BP was so paranoid at the time that they didn't announce his departure until he was airborne, and refused to disclose his location.
Dudley continued to run the company from his secret location. In August, a Russian court banned Dudley from holding office in the country for two years. Then in early September, BP and the Russians signed a deal agreeing that Dudley would be out as CEO. The move, along with other provisions of the agreement, put the venture into Russian control.
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