Chief executive of BP expected to step down

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Oil execs in Senate hearing as gulf oil spill cleanup efforts continue -- photos

Oil companies stress one another's failures in a Senate hearing as cleanup and containment efforts continue in the Gulf of Mexico, after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig April 20.

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"I was sick to my stomach," Bea said. "It was making light of serious things."

One of the firm's many other management consultants recalls being scolded for holding a cup of tea and an attaché case as he walked up some stairs. He was supposed to keep one hand free to grab the railing if he stumbled.

A former BP executive said every briefing, even on non-technical issues, started with people describing an experience that taught a safety lesson. "It was like prayer in school. I dreaded these things," said the executive, who like other current and former BP employees spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their business relationships.

Meanwhile, important safety issues were neglected. A former BP executive, without any background in drilling, was given just four hours of training before being sent to oversee safety on an offshore rig. And U.S. refineries continued to accumulate citations for safety violations.

"They confused personal safety, which is easy to achieve but which tends to be non-catastrophic, with safety of process," one consultant said. "I don't think Tony got that."

The company's overlapping organization structures didn't help. "We had endless conversations about safety, but not a lot about execution," said one of the former BP executives. "It was difficult to know who was the senior person responsible for any given thing."

Many of BP's cultural problems date to its late 1990s acquisitions of Amoco, Arco and Sohio. Under Browne, BP had assembled a new American empire. Because he did it when oil prices were low, he transformed BP from a mid-size company into a supermajor.

The culture of this sprawling giant differed from its U.S. counterparts, and Browne was proud of that. Exxon was seen as rigid and unimaginative. Browne told an American academic that "the whole purpose is to release the creativity of the very talented individuals who work for us. We want them to be entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats doing exactly what they are told from above."

"BP DNA is very specific," said a retired executive. "It is very admirable and very British at its best. It is about discretionary judgment. The American approach is prescriptive. It is box ticking."

To some extent, BP's method worked. Industry experts say BP has pushed the edge of technology. Last year, it drilled a Gulf of Mexico well in water twice as deep as the Macondo well and twice as far beneath the seafloor. Hayward came from that risk-taking engineering part of the business.

"So that comes back to the question: What was Tony trying to change?" said a consultant who has worked in the oil industry. "It would be wrong to say Tony was trying to change or reduce the innovation. He admires technical people who innovate."

Safety became "an overlay on a very distinctive set of behaviors," he said, adding that BP said, " 'Well, on top of what we do, we'll also do safety.' I think that's been shown to be not as effective."