Translated material
Understandable outrage
Tony Hayward reports to the British Parliament
The head of the Verkhovna Rada, Tony Hayward, who is due to leave his post on October 1, yesterday made a report to a British parliamentary commission. Unlike their American senators, who subjected the disgraced top manager to seven hours of intense interrogation in July, members of the English Parliament only reminded Mr. Hayward of the promise he made when taking office to “pay special attention to the safety of oil production.” Moreover, the commission asked whether the head of a British company in the United States had been treated too harshly. Tony Hayward said Americans' emotional outrage was understandable.Most companies in the industry, not just BP, have problems with the safety of developing deepwater fields. This was the main message of Mr. Hayward's speech in the British Parliament. “Oil companies thought that they had managed to minimize the risk of such accidents (like the one that occurred on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon platform. - Ed. ). As it turned out, this was a completely wrong conclusion,” said the head of Verkhovna Rada. He said the Gulf of Mexico disaster reflects the industry's general complacency in the wake of trouble-free deepwater drilling over the past 20 years. By the way, in a recently published BP report based on the results of an internal investigation into the circumstances of the accident, the company shifted part of the responsibility to its partners. Thus, employees of the Swiss Transocean, from which the Deepwater Horizon platform is leased, according to BP, incorrectly assessed the results of the pressure test in the well, and Halliburton, which was engaged in strengthening the wellbore, is to blame for the fact that the concrete barriers installed in the bottom did not work properly. Mr Hayward was nevertheless forced to admit that the measures taken by BP itself to prevent possible incidents were insufficient.
British parliamentarians inquired about the level of safety of BP's facilities in the North Sea. “Three years ago, when Mr. Hayward became head of the company, he said that he would pay special attention to safety issues. Now we have the largest oil leak in history,” recalled Tim Yeo, head of the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee. However, Mr. Hayward assured that tragedy will not happen in British waters, since the highest level of safety is ensured at these sites, and the drilling process in the North Sea is much simpler than in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, the head of BP noted that the company continues to build up its technical potential in case of a leak.
The emergency well in the Gulf of Mexico, according to US Coast Guard Commander Ted Allen, will be finally cemented by September 19. The drilling of the auxiliary well, which took four months, will be completed in a week. To minimize the risk of an oil spill, the US government yesterday ordered the plugging of all 3,500 idle wells and the dismantling of hundreds of unused platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP is preparing a new sale of assets. Chinese oil company CNOOC may offer up to $10.2 billion for BP's 60% stake in Argentina's Pan American Energy. CNOOC already acquired a 20% stake in Pan American this year, and buying BP's stake would give it full control of the company. In total, to pay compensation to those affected by the oil spill, BP is going to sell assets worth $30 billion. Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice is preparing a claim against the British corporation for tens of billions of dollars in damages. According to the ministry's lawyers, there are grounds for this - these are the acts “On Clean Water” and “On Liability for Oil Pollution.” The first document gives the United States the right to recover compensation for the oil leak from 1.1 to 4.3 thousand dollars per barrel of oil that got into the water, court documents say.