The real villain of BP

At Tony Hayward’s inquisition in Washington last week, the hapless BP chief executive resisted the temptation to condemn his predecessor, Lord Browne of Madingley, by name. Instead, pressed repeatedly to explain why BP had breached safety regulations on over 700 occasions, Hayward described 2006 as the corporation’s worst year. That was John Browne’s last full year as chief executive. He left the job humiliated, having been exposed for signing an untruthful court statement. Ever since, Browne has defended that dishonesty as a unique aberration. But as the American investigation of the Gulf catastrophe develops, the blame for the poisonous legacy inherited by Hayward will increasingly be heaped on Browne. The credibility of the British government’s proposed ‘cuts czar’ will be shredded.

To his credit, Browne transformed BP from a dying corporation in the early 1990s into the world’s second largest oil behemoth. He refocused BP on ‘elephants’ — the big oil reservoirs — and ruthlessly cut costs.