Three Men, Three Views of BP CEO Tony Hayward

CBS/AP

This commentary was written by CBSNews.com Editor-in-Chief Daniel Farber.

BP CEO Tony Hayward is in the hot seat.

Every day that more oil spills into the Gulf and reaches U.S. shores, his personal stock (not to mention his company's stock price) suffers. And he is clearly in President Obama's dog house.

But Hayward is not without friends in this country. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is in charge of the Unified Command dealing with the spill, don't appear to believe he is untrustworthy or worth shoving overboard.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg knows what its like to run a big company. The billionaire founded the financial information behemoth Bloomberg, which employs 10,000 people across 135 countries. 

On his weekly radio show Friday, Bloomberg expressed some sympathy for Hayward. He said that the world should not rush to judge the BP, and that BP's leader "didn't exactly go down there and blow up the well." He advised focusing on how to fix the problem, and leveraging BP's expertise, and then figuring out who to blame.

Bloomberg goes too easy on the CEO. Hayward didn't intend for the well to rupture so catastrophically, but he was responsible as the man at the top of the oil company for the lax safety standards and response plans.

As for Adm. Allen, who has the last word when an issue comes up with BP's handling of the situation, he said in a press briefing Friday that he trusts the BP CEO.  

"The fact of the matter is we have to have a cooperative productive relationship for this to work moving forward. When I talk to him, I ask for answers, I get them. You could characterize that as trust, partnership, cooperation, collaboration or whatever, but this has to be a unified effort moving forward if we're gonna get this thing solved," Adm. Allen said.

Adm. Allen just wants the leak fixed, and he wants his life back too. The path to that outcome depends greatly on BP, which has the expertise for dealing with stopping the flow of oil.  However, patience is growing thin.

"I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said. "We've got to find someone to put in charge who has the guts and the will to make some decisions." 

In contrast to Mayor Bloomberg and Adm. Allen, President Obama has shown less trust or respect for Tony Hayward. In fact, during an interview with NBC, Mr. Obama said that he would fire the BP CEO if he worked for him. 

The president is trying to salvage a political situation that has gotten out of control. He can't stop the leak or the constant drumming that he has not been forceful or present enough during Gulf oil spill crisis. People want tough talk from the president, and he is not looking for a photo op with the punching bag BP CEO.

He'll likely settle for the less visible Chairman of the board of directors at BP, Carl-Henric Svanberg, next week in Washington. And, he'll have to take his share of the blame (in addition to blaming his predecessor) for the cozy and dysfunctional relationship between the MMS (Mineral Management Service) and the government.

At the end of the day, there is plenty of blame to go around, and Tony Hayward will get his life back and fade into the background. Unfortunately, he will always be remembered as the face of an epic environmental and economic disaster.

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Daniel Farber is editor-in-chief of CBSNews.com. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow him on Twitter.

[maxboll]

Calm down mr. President, you have done all you can; You going to go a visit 4th time, there you send a Clean up mobilitation, there is disaster comette, there is costgard corps, there is inquest if there were negligent or criminal action and there is compasation of economics disaster. Be cool and let them others do thier job as well.

[hodieb-khalifa]

REQUEST YOUR SENATORS & CONGRESSMEN TO INVITE ME TO TESTIFY & FACE HAYWARD TO IMPLEMENT THIS SOLUTION TO END THE NIGHTMARE

As an expert in oilfields in the Middle East, I've already offered BP the following simple technique that can instantly plug the well. Though BP admitted it can work, it wouldn't implement it because it will kill the Well.

PLUGGING BP WELL BY A STRING OF CEMENT-FILLED CASING PIPES:

{BP has to lower down the wellbore through the Riser Pipe Stub and the Blowout Preventer a string of 16"- 18" Casing Pipes connected together about 500-1000 ft long after being filled with cement. BP Well will instantly be plugged and there will be no need for the Relief Wells. They have a big assortment of Casing Pipes onboard their platform in the Gulf. The annular space between the Casing Pipe String and the well walls can be filled by pumping cement. The whole operation will take a couple of hours- Finito!}


Eng. Hodieb Khalifa
Cairo - Egypt
hodieb_khalifa yahoo

[mary-bearry]

Comments for Mr. Hayward,
1) Those small inconsequential drops of oil in that great big Gulf of Mexico are now showing up on beaches and marshes of 4 states.
2) How self involved do you have to be to think that "No one wants this stopped" more than you do? REALLY? Are you still making a living? Feeding your family? 3) And again, how self involved do you have to be to state to people who are losing not only their income to support their families, their way of ever making a living again in this life time, and having the ocean in their backyard turned into a toxic waste dump that YOU WANT YOUR LIFE BACK?

[cbsblogger]

BP has been lying about this disaster from day one. Bloomberg apparently sees nothing wrong with lying. It is inbred in the Wall Street culture.

[Turbidite]

I'll bet Bloomberg also has a lot of investors that hold BP stock. He would be singing a different song if it was Long Island beaches and the Hamptons being drenched in oil leaking from a BP well. Is he on the inside track of BP and its day to day decision making & planning? I don't think so. Many more people along the Gulf Coast will be aadversely affected than BP's 80,000 personnel and pensioners. Fishermen, tourist trade, transporters, refrigeration companies, restaurants, and all sorts of support industries to make the fishing industry go will be either broke or wiped out, not to mention the wildlife.