trying to get some sense of where this is going and what can come of it. wolf, they took a break for an hour. they should be reconvening shortly. but to a lot of people, there couldn t have been much that was very satisfying in those opening questions by the congressman of the ceo of bp. and what was especially surprising, i have to say, is the congressman part stupak, henry waxman. henry waxman is the chairman of the full committee. bart stupak is the chairman of the sub kmiet tee. they gave all the questions earlier in a formal detailed letter to bp saying these are the questions basically we re going to ask tony hayward. he came up today, made that statement, apologizing, expressing his deep regret, but then once the specific substantive questions began, he began dodging those questions saying either he wasn t involved in the actual decision making on that specific technical issue, or he just didn t know, or other people knew.
the committee at center stage. marsha black burn, a tennessee republican. thank you for coming in. we didn t learn much from mr. hayward today, didn t we? over an over again he said he wasn t hart of the decisionmaking. i didn t know. at one point chairman waxman asked him, didn t you get our letter that listed questions? how many could you weren t prepared to answer those questions? john, there should be a division of labor and the president should have laid this out on day one. saying bp you re responsible for the leak, stop the leak. federal government, federal waters we immediate to clean it up. let s get busy, governors, mayors, you have availability of the resources, you need to do due diligence, find out what happened. make sure it never happens again. we haven t had that division of labor. we were trying to do our part on that. find out what happened. unfortunately it seemed mr. hayward wasn t able to answer
people died and 170 people were injured, north slope, the problems we ve had there, bp s own 2007 report on the management accountability project, in which it stated that there was a culture that evolved over the years that seemed to ignore risk, tolerate noncompliance and accept incompetence. i wasn t surprised when we heard about the explosion in the gulf and bp was part of it. since then this committee, the oversight and investigations committee of the energy and commerce committee, we have methodically looked at this issue. and i know you have and your company has also. on may 12th we had a hearing, which we looked at a numb of things that went wrong. on may 25th, our committee, chairman waxman and myself put out a memo, based on bp s preliminary report. and i m sure you re familiar with that report, are you not, sir? i am. and then on june 14th, chairman waxman and i sent you a letter,
did you have a technical expert advising you? i had no prior knowledge or involvement in the drilling of this well. none whatsoever. then who was? if you re the ceo of the company, if i m a shareholder of bp, which i m not, but if i am, how can i then have comfort that the ceo knows what s going on as far as safety on the rigs? or is it true that it s just all about profit? there was a drilling team providing oversight of this well. there was a drilling team. we ve got to go to mr. waxman. mr. waxman for questions, please. mr. hayward, when you became ceo three years ago, you said that safety was going to be your top priority. you had focus on it like a laser. your website said safe and reliable operations are integral to bp s success. i want to ask you whether you think bp has met that commitment that you made when you became ceo? since i became ceo we have made a lot of progress. we have made it very clear to
perhaps more by their own inability to budge him off message. i ask you to provide us, to be open with us and honest with us in your responses. instead, it seems as though we re getting statements memorized by you and provided by your legal counsel. you are really insulting our intelligence, with all due respect by not giving us any answers and telling us that you have to wait for some investigation. i think the rest of the world isn t blind. we know what s happened and we know that bp obviously didn t do what it was supposed to do. and i might say this to you. you are never as good as they say you are or as bad as they say you are. one important point, chairman waxman says he has read 30,000 documents in this case and in essence he found none showing that hayward knew but b. those problems on april 20. shepard: not every lawmaker went on attack. one congressman apologized to tony heyward.