BP exec accused of ’stonewalling,’ repeatedly criticized at congressional hearing on spill

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BP oil executive accused of ’stonewalling’

WASHINGTON — Chastened by heavy criticism, a grim-faced BP chief executive Tony Hayward insisted Thursday he was “devastated with this accident” in the Gulf of Mexico and denied shunning tough questions from Congress on the nation’s worst oil spill.

“I’m not stonewalling,” Hayward told a House investigations subcommittee, responding to repeated suggestions that he was dodging questions.

Hayward — the man President Barack Obama suggested he would fire if he could — said he was “deeply sorry” for the spill that’s been gushing for more than eight weeks. “I understand the seriousness of the situation, the frustrations and fears that continue to be voiced,” he said.

Waiting to testify, Hayward had to endure more than an hour of mostly unrelenting criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“We are not small people, but we wish to get our lives back,” Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the subcommittee chairman, told Hayward, throwing back comments made the day before by BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg — about how BP sympathized with the “small people” of the Gulf — and Hayward’s earlier remark that he wanted his “life back.”

Later, Hayward appeared unflappable during a tense exchange with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the full House Energy and Commerce Committee. Speaking slowly and calmly in his British accent, he sought to deflect accusations — based on internal BP documents obtained by congressional investigators — that BP chose a particular well design that was riskier but cheaper by $7 million to $10 million.

Hayward repeatedly said he didn’t make those design choices as CEO. “I’m not stonewalling. I simply was not involved in the decision-making process,” Hayward told Waxman, adding that the well’s engineering team clearly had grappled with such issues.

“What’s clear to me,” Waxman interrupted, “is that you don’t want to answer our questions.”

He added, “You’re kicking the can down the road and acting like you have nothing to do with … this company. I find that irresponsible.”

Waxman told the BP executive that in his committee’s review of 30,000 items, there was “not a single e-mail or document that you paid even the slightest attention to the dangers at this well.”

There were a lot of other subjects on which Hayward denied expertise. At one point he said, “I am not a cement engineer” when asked about issues surrounding the quality of cement work done by contractor Halliburton Co. He also said, “I am not a drilling engineer.”

And when asked by Rep. Edward Markey about underwater oil plumes from the spill — the existence of which Hayward has challenged in the past — the BP executive said, “I’m not an oceanographic scientist.”

Hayward declined to use the word “plumes” but said “data indicates there is oil in very low concentrations” beneath the surface, some of which came from the spill and some of which came from other sources.

A day after BP agreed to pay for a $20 billion victims’ compensation fund, Hayward said under oath to lawmakers that “I feel a great deal of responsibility” for the April explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that triggered the giant spill.

“The fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon never should have happened,” Hayward said. And, while “we need to know what went wrong,” it’s still “too early to say what caused the incident. There is still extensive work to do.”

As he began to testify, a protester disrupted the hearing and was forcibly removed from the room by Capitol police. The woman was identified as Diane Wilson, 61, a fisherman from Seadrift, Texas, near the Gulf Coast. Her hands stained black, she shouted to Hayward from the back of the room: “You need to be charged with a crime.”

While most of the opening statements by lawmakers contained harsh criticisms of BP, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, turned the tables and apologized to BP, accusing the White House of conducting a “$20 billion shakedown” by requiring the company to establish the fund to compensate those hurt by the spill.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House” on Wednesday, said Barton, who has received at least $100,470 in political contributions from oil and gas interests since the beginning of 2009, the second-highest amount among all the committee members.

Vice President Joe Biden later called the shakedown comment “outrageous,” and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction.”

Later, Barton told the committee: “I want the record to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible and should in every way do everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident. And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued, in opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction.”

The $20 billion fund was finalized during a four-hour meeting at the White House on Wednesday.

Obama and other White House officials did not question BP leaders about drilling shortcuts, administration officials said Thursday.

That’s because the session was focused on finalizing the damages fund, not on the investigation of what went wrong, Carol Browner, Obama’s top energy adviser, told The Associated Press. Obama has set up an independent commission to investigate the oil spill disaster.

Internal BP documents show the company made a series of moneysaving shortcuts that increased the risks of danger on the deep-sea rig.

Stupak, the subcommittee chairman and a former Michigan state trooper, noted that over the past five years, 26 people have died and 700 have been injured in BP accidents — including the Gulf spill, a pipeline spill in Alaska and a refinery explosion in Texas.

Hayward argued that safety had always been his top priority and “that is why I am so devastated with this accident.” When he became CEO, Hayward said he would focus “like a laser” on safety, a phrase he repeated on Thursday.

Meanwhile, a rig drilling a relief well meant to help plug the gushing blown-out well is ahead of schedule and could reach its target over the next three to four weeks, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, Obama’s point man on the spill response. Allen said Thursday that a drill from a rig near the ruptured well is nearly 10,000 feet below the sea floor and should come within 10 feet of the existing well in the next few weeks.

He also said that the final push of drilling is the most difficult. The relief drilling was originally slated for completion in mid-August. Once the drill reaches its target, BP will pump heavy mud down the relief well in an attempt to stop the flow.

At the hearing, Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, played a video from a committee session on the Gulf Coast in which two widows whose husbands were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion suggested that BP had put profits before safety. “They are the symbols and the faces of this disaster,” Braley said.

Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican, said that BP “appears to have taken their eye off the ball.”

He expressed surprise at Hayward’s claim that he didn’t know anything about the well in question, including safety issues that had been raised internally, until he was told in April that drilling had confirmed an oil discovery.

“But you’re the CEO of the company,” Burgess said. “With due respect,” shot back Hayward, “We drill hundreds of wells around the world.”

“Yeah, that’s what scares me right now,” said Burgess.

Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., questioned BP’s commitment to safety.

BP had 760 safety violations in the past five years and paid $373 million in fines, Sullivan said. By contrast, Sunoco and ConocoPhillips each had eight safety violations and ExxonMobil just one, Sullivan said.

“How in the heck do you explain that?” he asked Hayward. Hayward said most of those violations went back to 2005 and 2006 — before he became CEO. “We have made major changes in the company over the last three to four years,” he said.

Hayward, who became CEO in 2007, received $4.7 million in 2009 in total salary, performance bonus and other non-cash compensation, roughly 27 percent higher than the $3.7 million he received a year earlier, according to an AP review of filings available on BP’s Web site

As of Thursday morning, the BP well had sent between 66 million and 120 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, based on government daily spill rate figures.

Associated Press writers H. Josef Hebert, Seth Borenstein, Matt Apuzzo, Eileen Sullivan and Ben Feller in Washington and Harry Weber in Houston contributed to this report.