Obama to Meet With BP Chairman Svanberg on Oil Spill (Update2)
By Julianna Goldman
June 10 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is seeking a meeting with BP Plc Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and other “appropriate” company officials to discuss the company’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the government’s national incident commander, requested the June 16 meeting in Washington in a letter sent to Svanberg at the company’s London headquarters.
It’s being scheduled as administration officials and lawmakers are escalating their criticism of BP and pressuring company to speed up payment of economic damage claims from the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
“The BP Deepwater Horizon spill has had a profound impact on Americans living in the Gulf region and time is of the essence in resolving these issues,” Allen wrote in the letter.
Svanberg and BP officials will meet with senior administration officials and Obama will participate in a portion of the session, Allen wrote. It would be Obama’s first direct communication with BP representatives since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 people and triggered the spill.
BP today slumped to the lowest price in more than seven years in London trading on growing U.S. anger over its failure to cut off the flow of oil from its damaged well. The shares have fallen 44 percent since April 20.
BP Chief Executive
While Allen didn’t seek the presence of Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward, he did ask for “any appropriate officials from BP.” The meeting is scheduled a day before Hayward appears before a House Energy and Commerce oversight hearing examining the cause of the spill.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said earlier today that BP’s chairman is “the relevant person” for Obama to discuss the oil company’s responsibility for paying the costs of cleaning up the environmental damage and making up for the losses to individuals and businesses on the Gulf coast.
“As the president has said, our administration is not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods,” Allen wrote.
Meeting With Families
Obama met earlier today with the families of workers killed in the explosion and promised the U.S. won’t go forward with new deepwater drilling until safety measures to prevent a similar incident are in place.
Up until this point, administration officials have said there hasn’t been a need for Obama to speak directly with BP representatives. Additionally, with investigations of BP under way by the Justice Department, putting the president in direct contact with the company’s CEO might complicate any probe.
Anything Hayward says, even in the context of a conversation with Obama, could be significant, according to Lawrence Barcella, a former federal prosecutor who is now an attorney at the Paul Hastings firm in Washington. Meeting with Svanberg poses less of a risk, he said.
Hayward “has been very involved both operationally and optically from the beginning,” Barcella said. “This likelihood of him being a substantive witness at a minimum, in one or more of the investigations, is extremely high. The chairman, on the other hand, has not been as public or operationally involved so the risk factor lessens.”
Hayward’s Remarks
The president also has expressed anger over Hayward’s May 30 comments about the spill’s impact on him, saying he “wanted my life back.” Hayward subsequently apologized.
“He wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements,” Obama said in a June 7 interview on NBC’s “Today Show.”
There could also be a political liability for Obama to meet with Hayward, who has been the public face of BP.
A June 8 Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 81 percent of Americans giving low marks to BP for its response to the spill, while 64 percent want the government to pursue criminal charges against the company.
“The relationship between BP and the federal government is not a partnership, and there is no moral equivalency between the president of the United States and the man potentially responsible for the worst environmental disaster in history,” Democratic strategist Paul Begala said of Hayward.
Seeking Updates
During the meeting, Allen said the administration also wants updates on “efforts to stop the leak at its source, reduce the spread of oil, protect the shoreline and mitigate damages, as well as support long term recovery efforts to ensure that all individuals and communities impacted by the spill are made whole.”
Obama on June 4 in Louisiana said that if the company is able to pay dividends and buy advertising, “we better not hear about the nickel-and-diming” of business owners hurt by the spill and oil workers who have lost their jobs.
That same day, Hayward and Svanberg said on a conference call that the decision will be made on July 27 whether to maintain the 14-cents-a-share quarterly dividend for the second quarter. If they keep the same dividend this year as in 2009, the dividend yield, or ratio of payout to share price, is more than 10 percent, the highest among 18 peers according to Bloomberg data.
To contact the reporter on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: June 10, 2010 19:18 EDT |
