Rep. Dugette’s Futile Questions
Liveblog by Khan
Rep. DeGette from CO is grilling Hayward on these documents, cited in letters from Waxman & Stupak, giving detailed technical information and likely questions on BP’s well, its safety and its operations, that were sent to Hayward on Monday. Hayward says he hadn’t seen any of them before.
DeGette’s technical questions are probing and substantive, but Hayward expectedly refuses to engage. Frustrated, DeGette asks if he "doesn’t know" because his lawyers told him to say that.
Hayward says no, insisting that his answers are genuine.
Rep. Braley (IA) asks Hayward if reports from the Occupational and Safety Administration showing that two of BP’s wells had 760 safety citations is representative of a company that engages in "safe and reliable" practices. Hayward refuses to engage. Here’s much more from OilWatchdog about what Hayward surely knows regarding BP’s culture of safety-be-damned, including that two BP refineries accounted for 97% of "willful, egregious" refinery safety violations since 2007.
And in response to Braley’s question about WH meeting yesterday, Hayward insists that BP and the WH "came together" to find a "way forward"–denying that it was, as Rep. Barton claimed, a "shakedown."
The mood here is one of frustration. No one expects anything revelatory from Hayward, but the committee members are futilely trying anyway.
How can BP sharholders tolerate a CEO whose willful lack of knowledge about safety or operations seems to have put the corporation in danger for its very existence?