Bob Dudley steps up to take on the role Tony Hayward flubbed.Photo courtesy of BP
NEW ORLEANS, La. — BP’s Tony Hayward handed over management of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Wednesday after enduring weeks of criticism and ridicule in the United States for his handling of the disaster.
Bob Dudley, an American BP managing director known as a skilled trouble-shooter who is also conveniently a native of the affected state of Mississippi, will take charge “effective immediately,” BP said in a statement.
Hayward, the British chief executive of the energy giant, made a series of insensitive gaffes in the past two months since the disaster and turned in an unsympathetic performance at a grilling from angry U.S. lawmakers.
“The new organization will manage all aspects of the response to the Deepwater Horizon incident and the oil and gas spill in the Gulf of Mexico, ensuring that BP fulfills its promises to the people of the Gulf Coast and continues its work to restore the region’s environment,” BP said.
Hayward said his successor had a “deep appreciation and affinity for the Gulf Coast,” having grown up in Mississippi.
The spill continued to grow Wednesday, despite a containment system that captured 25,836 barrels of oil from the gushing well head on the sea floor in the last 24 hours to Tuesday afternoon.
U.S. oil spill response coordinator Admiral Thad Allen said more ships and equipment were being brought in to boost the effort, but the spill will not be capped at least until BP completes the first of two relief wells in early August.
Officials estimate between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels are pouring into the Gulf each day, but an internal BP document released by a Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) Monday showed the firm contemplated a worst-case scenario of as much as 100,000 barrels, or 4.2 million gallons, a day.
America’s worst previous oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, saw nearly 11 million gallons leak off the Alaskan coast, but even under the low end of current estimates, more than 90 million gallons have now spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.
BP said it has spent $2 billion so far on cleaning up the spill and compensating residents and businesses facing ruin, 64 days into the disaster.
On Tuesday, it announced it was donating the revenue from the sale of oil recovered from the ruptured well to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), which is helping to rehabilitate species affected by the spill, and said it was providing NFWF with an immediate donation of $5 million.
