Tony Hayward no longer CEO but BP career continues in Russia

Tony Hayward was expected to resign Monday after a meeting in London to choose his fate. Instead, he’s being shuffled off to Russia, where he will direct BP’s role in TNK-BP, a joint venture considered one of BP’s plum projects . After cultivating a reckless culture that led to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico 2010 and then botching BP’s response, Hayward seems is wiggling off the hook. But before he flies to Moscow, some U.S. senators would like to ask him some personal questions about a BP-Libya oil deal they think influenced the release of a convicted terrorist.

Tony Hayward’s Russia assignment is ironic

BP boots Tony Hayward from the corner office in October. The Associated Press reports that Robert Dudley is his likely replacement. After Hayward botched directing BP’s oil spill response, Dudley exchanged him. Hayward will serve on the board of BP’s Russian venture TNK-BP. In an ironic twist, Dudley led TNK-BP until he got on someone’s bad side and had to leave Russia in 2008.

Dudley’s TNK-BP run a lesson for Hayward?

BP thinks more of Tony Heyward than most American’s and American politicians, if his new role swimming with Russian oil sharks is any indication. Accounting for 25 percent of its total production, the Washington Post reports how the TNK-BP venture is one of BP’s crown jewels. But Robert Dudley’s experience proves the post can be a headache. After getting into a dispute with Russian shareholders, Dudley was forced to leave the country.

Did Hayward negotiate to release a terrorist in exchange for oil?

Tony Hayward may be changing addresses, but senators Bob Menendez and Kirsten Gillibrand won’t give up calling him before Congress. The New York Observer reports that they senators want to hear from Hayward at a July 29 hearing to the release of the Lockerbie bomber. The senators have been pushing British officials for weeks to conduct a full investigation of the links between a BP-Libya oil deal and also the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset al-Megrahi. Menendez said he believed Hayward was within the middle of negotiations with the Libyans during the oil deal.

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