BP CEO Tony Hayward’s Opening Statements To Congress Sound Very Familiar
BP CEO Tony Hayward has proven to be the kind of spokesman that the company can’t let veer too far off-message. Tomorrow, Hayward will stand before the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce to explain the Congress what happened and what his company is doing to solve the problem and, in opening statements published recently by CNN, Hayward is sticking to the original script of his PSA fairly strictly.
“The explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon and the resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico never should have happened ? and I am deeply sorry that they did,” begins the statement, expressing both in the introduction and throughout his explanation that he and his company grasp the magnitude of the disaster and that “BP will do what we can to make certain that an incident like this does not happen again.” He continues, in what feels like merely an expansion of the company’s 30-second ad, to explain that he has been spending much time in the Gulf Coast region and “I fully grasp the terrible reality of the situation.”
Of course, this isn’t an ad, and he is expected to come up with specific solutions to the problem and very thorough explanations of his company’s behavior. While the statements present a much more specific plan for attacking the gushing oil well and solving the clean-up crisis than the company has given before, the best solution still seems to be the relief wells, which will be finished around August. That said, he explains that the Lower Marine Riser Package is helping in the meantime and praises his group of scientists saying that, “with the possible exception of the space program in the 1960s, it is difficult to imagine the gathering of a larger, more technically proficient team in one place in peacetime.”
Below is the complete script set for Hayward tomorrow, which promises to be much less interesting than the answers Hayward will have to give off-the-cuff to questions from legislators. Also below is the original BP response ad– the similarity in language between that and the congressional statements seem to indicate that BP doesn’t quite trust Hayward with a broader message, or that they have faith that those words will reflect positively on them.
