LONDON — An official says BP CEO Tony Hayward will step down in October and take job with company’s joint venture in Russia.
After a series of blunders, Hayward has become the battered face of BP's efforts to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and clean up the damage. He was called back to London a month ago after a bruising encounter with a Congressional committee and has since kept a low profile.
"We're getting to the end of the situation," said David Battersby at Redmayne Bentley Stockbrokers. "To draw a line under it, they need a new chief executive."
The BP PLC board would have to approve a change in company leadership, and there is persistent speculation that chairman Karl-Henric Svanberg, who moved into the post on Jan. 1, is also likely to lose his job later this year.
News reports suggested that Hayward would be replaced by an American, Bob Dudley, who succeeded Hayward as BP's point man in dealing with the oil spill effort and was in London Monday with other board members. The Financial Times reported that Hayward was likely to remain in his post for a couple of months before handing it over.
A U.S. government official also said on condition of anonymity that Hayward was on his way out as CEO.
Hayward, 53, who has a Ph.D in geology, had been a well-regarded chief executive. But his promise when he took the job in 2007 to focus on safety "like a laser" came back to haunt him after an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and unleashed a deep-sea gusher of oil.
Hayward's early attempts to shift blame to the rig operator, Transocean, failed to take the heat off BP. Later remarks that the amount of oil pouring into the Gulf was "tiny" compared to its volume of water and Hayward's whining that he would "like my life back" made him an object of scorn. That emotion turned to fury when Gulf residents heard that Hayward spent a day at a fancy English sailing race in which his yacht was competing at the height of the disaster.