The chief executive of troubled British oil giant BP, Tony Hayward, was negotiating his terms of departure yesterday and was likely to quit within 24 hours, the BBC reported.
The British broadcaster said it had been told by a senior BP source that an announcement was due shortly on Hayward, whose future has been in doubt for several weeks over his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The BBC added that there was a “strong likelihood” that he would be replaced by Bob Dudley, who took over management of BP’s response to the spill from Hayward last month.
PHOTO: EPA
Earlier, the Sunday Telegraph reported that Hayward was poised to resign before BP announces its half-year results on Tuesday. Reports have suggested for days that Hayward would resign at some point in the coming weeks as British-based BP battles to recover its reputation in the wake of the spill.
The Sunday Telegraph said that there could be wrangling over Hayward’s severance package, under which he is likely to be paid a minimum figure just over £1 million (US$1.5 million).
BP has said that Hayward “has the support of the board and management” but has declined to make further comment on media reports.
Meanwhile, BP will start drilling off the Libyan coast in a few weeks, it said on Saturday, despite lingering questions over the deal which led to the exploration and the oil firm’s role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“We expect to begin the first well in the next few weeks,” spokesman David Nicholas said, adding that the 2007 deal signed with Libya to explore the Gulf of Sirte included commitments to drill five wells.
Although he could not give a detailed timeframe, he said: “These wells can take six months or more to drill.”
The future of deep-sea drilling has come under scrutiny following an explosion in April on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 workers.
It sank, causing a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in US history, sparking a furious reaction against BP in the US.
BP’s Libyan well, at about 1,737m under water, is deeper than the well beneath the Deepwater Horizon, but Nicholas said the company took the risks involved “very seriously.”
“If there are any lessons obviously that come out of the investigation into what happened on the Deepwater Horizon, we will apply those to our drillings across the world,” he added.
The imminent drilling was made possible by an agreement which British-based BP signed with Libya in 2007 worth at least US$900 million, then the firm’s biggest-ever deal of its kind.
This deal has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks amid claims by US lawmakers that it may have been linked to the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was convicted of blowing up a US airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.
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