company. who was? if i m a shareholder of pp, 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 it s all just about profit? there was a drilling team providing oversight of this well. there was a drilling team. i m going to have to go to mr. waxman. mr. waxman questions, please. mr. hayward, when you became ceo three years ago, you said that safety was going to be your top priority, you would focus on it like a laser. your web site said safe and reliabrely able 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 everyone in the company that safe, reliable have you met that commitment that you made? and we ve made major changes.
it doesn t appear that you re very concerned about them. are you? i m very concerned that we get to the bottom of this incident and understand exactly what happened such that we can assure that this never happens again. easy to say. mr. chairman, just a request, please. if mr. hayward could move the microphone a bit closer, i m having difficulty hearing. yes. we all are. i should have said something earlier. just pull it a little closer if you could, please. mr. sullivan for questions, please. i should note mr. upton is here from michigan member of the full committee, so is mr. engel, if they want to ask questions they can at the appropriate time. mr. sullivan. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. hayward, according to the occupational safety and health administration, there is mounting evidence that bp is one of the has one with of the worst safety records of any major oil company operating in the united states. is there a deficient safety culture at bp that led to the
other ceoss said they wouldn t proceed this way. it appears that bp knowingly risked well failure to save a few million dollars and you were drilling 18,000 feet below the sea. if you made mistakes, the consequences of those would be catastrophic and, in fact, have turned out to be. don t you feel any sense of responsibility for these decisions? i feel a great sense of responsibility for the accident. we need to allow how about for the decisions that made the accident more likely? we need to determine what were with the critical decisions and did you get my letter and did you review it? i ve read your letter, chairman, and i ve reviewed it. did you realize in the letter we asked you to be prepared to discuss these issues? as i ve said, i ve seen the documents following your letter, and i can t pass judgment on
these are small people. these are people who also work offshore on the oil rigs, dangerous work and sometimes, as on april 20th, they lose their lives. so these are not small people. in terms of what is going on in capitol hill right now, it s too early to judge what s going on here. people are still at work at this marina going out and trying to clean up the oil as best they can in the pouring rainstorm, contes contessa. charles, thank you very much for that. we are again watching for this hearing to begin on capitol hill. when it does, we ll take you back there live. my big question today is bp being sincere in its apologies, or, as luke suggested, that some lawmakers have said, is the white house shaking down the oil company into taking this position? i want to hear your thoughts. twitter or facebook or e-mail. live pictures from capitol hill where lawmakers are questioning bp ceo tony hayward.
unwilling to say how long he ll be ceo of bp. he said he s at this point focused on stopping the leak. let me bring in now from capitol hill congressman charlie melanson, a democrat from louisiana. of course i ve got my panel with me as well. congressman, let me begin with you. do you feel like lawmakers are getting straight answers from tony hayward who continues to say i don t know because the investigation is ongoing? well, i understand the process and it s just like in a court of law, there s discovery and i think that s what s going on. whether he knows, doesn t know will will prove itself out in time. what my concern right now and i m not the technical person is i was upset this morning with the ranking members s apology to bp because they re putting up a $20 billion escrow for this situation. and it took 10 to 20 years for some people after valdez to get settlement. the people that are hurting, the