Ex-BP CEO Chooses Sea Protection Forum to Talk About Spill

BP should have done more to prevent the Gulf of Mexico oil spill two years ago but the company's complacency was not unique in the industry, former CEO Tony Hayward said this week in his most public comments yet about the disaster.
Hayward chose to talk about the disaster, the worst offshore spill in U.S. history in which 11 men died, at a marine-protection conference in Istanbul.
He warned that Istanbul, a UNESCO World Heritage site with a population of some 15 million people, could see a similar disaster unless it stems the flow of oil tankers through its Bosporus Strait. Some 150 million tonnes of crude and petroleum products transit the narrow, winding waterway each year.
Nearly 5 million barrels of crude spewed into the Gulf of Mexico between April and September 2010 after BP's Macondo well blew out, causing explosions on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which was licensed to BP by Transocean.
The oil super-major launched a $15 billion emergency response, the biggest ever in corporate history, Hayward said. It hired nearly 50,000 people and deployed 10,000 vessels, "more than took part in the Normandy landing," he said, likening it to the sacrifice made by more than 200,000 allied soldiers in World War Two.
In another clumsy water reference, Hayward described the disaster as a "black swan": a low-probability high-impact risk that could have been avoided if all systems had been working and monitored properly.
"What happened that day was a tragic and avoidable industrial accident," he admitted but added: "If the blowout preventer had not failed, the events of April 2010 would have remained a personal tragedy and an industrial accident, but would not have caused an environmental and social disaster."
Blaming the rig's blowout preventer -- a valve used to seal and control oil wells -- would appear to pass some of the buck. London-based BP sued Cameron International Corp, which made the blowout preventer, in April 2011 for negligence. BP and its partners Transocean and Halliburton, the oilfield services contractor, have quarreled in public and in the courtroom over who was responsible for the spill. Halliburton is suing BP, claiming it withheld vital information about subsurface conditions.
A White House commission in January 2011 said BP, Transocean and Halliburton made a series of cost-cutting decisions that ultimately contributed to the blaze and oil spill. On Tuesday, the same U.S. administration granted BP permission to construct three rigs in the Gulf of Mexico at a projected cost of £2.5 billion.

"Unfortunately human behaviour works like this ... you learn from your mistakes," Hayward said. "We were wrong but our complacency was not unique. The industry had lulled itself into a false sense of security, thanks to 20 years of drilling in deep water without a serious accident."

These were Hayward's first public comments about the spill since leaving BP in October 2010, his publicist said. By the time he left BP, Hayward had already handed over day-to-day management of the crisis amid criticism for his handling of the crisis, including a comment that he would like his life back.

He was also berated in the press after he was photographed yacht racing while the oil still gushed. "South Park" witheringly lampooned him.

Hayward invoked the media scrutiny during his speech. "We had no equipment to contain and stop the oil on the seabed," he said. "No such equipment existed. We found ourselves having to design and build it -- improvising, as it were, on prime-time television."

An avid sailor and diver, Hayward, 55, gave his speech at a conference to discuss ways to protect the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, both ravaged by industrial pollution.

Nearly 150 million tonnes of crude and petroleum products transit through Istanbul's Bosporus Strait each year. The narrow, winding straits invite disaster.

Hayward seems to have bounced back. Late last year, with partners he formed the London-listed Genel Energy after they paid £1.3 billion for Genel Enerji, a Turkish company focused on exploration and production in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq. He is now CEO.

His new colleague -- Genel Energy president Mehmet Sepil - has also courted controversy. Sepil was slapped with the biggest fine ever (£1 million) by the Financial Standards Authority, the British regulator, for insider trading during Genel Enerji's failed merger with Heritage Oil in 2009. The Kurdish Energy Minister Ahsti Hawrami, kingmaker of operators in Kurdistan and a friend of Sepil and Hayward, is also accused by the FSA for insider trading the same company.

Hayward received a bonus pay out from Genel Energy of £11 on the second anniversary of the disaster. And greater riches could be on the horizon as Genel considers offshore exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. Will Hayward bring lessons learned from the Gulf of Mexico with him?

Greek Carnival Revives the Spirit of an Ancient City

Most of Istanbul's Greeks may be gone, but a revival of the raucous, pre-Lent festival of Baklahorani helps keep their spirit alive.
Two parades, led by troupes of costumed revelers banging drums and blaring clarinets, wound through the streets of Istanbul on Sunday and Monday to celebrate Carnival before seven weeks of abstinence and reflection for the Orthodox faithful. Hundreds of Turks, Greeks and tourists donned masques and wigs to join the street parties.
This year was the biggest celebration yet of Baklahorani, which roughly translates as "eating beans" in reference to the Lenten fast, since its revival in 2010. It was a days-long Istanbul street festival for centuries until 1941, when Greeks, facing pressure from Turkish authorities, abandoned the festival.
"In the 70 years since Baklahorani, demonstrations of faith were done in private. Today it is a matter of pride to celebrate in public," says organiser Haris Rigas, whose family left Istanbul for Greece decades ago. Rigas returned to Turkey five years ago to study political science at Istanbul's Bogazici University.
About 800 people attended the first of the two parades that took place on Sunday and weaved through Istanbul's main high street, Istiklal Caddesi in the district of Beyoglu. The same street witnessed a night of violence that targeted the city's Greeks and other ethnic minorities in September 1955. Hundreds of people were injured, and more than 5,000 businesses were destroyed. That accelerated the decline of the Greek community in Istanbul, once the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today, fewer than 3,000 Greeks, most of them pensioners, remain in their ancient homeland.

"I am here to celebrate Istanbul Greek culture," said Burcu Karabiyik, 38, a sculptor wearing a red, sequined eye mask. "It's important to stake a claim for Istanbul's traditions and show solidarity when our society is so polarised."

Most of Turkey's Greeks were expelled after World War One in a population exchange that also brought Muslims here from Greece. In later years, tensions over Cyprus, social discrimination and restrictions on property and other rights forced out more than 150,000 others. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property has been appropriated, schools are left without pupils, and priests hold services in empty churches.
Istanbul, Europe's largest city, is home to a mainly Muslim population of 14 million people, yet it retains the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the spiritual centre for the world's 300 million Orthodox. About 60,000 Armenian Christians and 20,000 Jews also live here.

Turkey's centre-right, Islamist-rooted government has made a few steps at improving the plight of Greeks since its election in 2002. They have granted Turkish citizenship to foreign bishops so they can join the Patriarchate's Holy Synod, which runs the Church and provides candidates for future patriarchs. Other gestures have included permission for a Greek Orthodox mass at Sumela Monastery near the Black Sea town of Trabzon for the first time since the 1920s.

Progress on returning seized properties has been slow. Greeks, along with Israelis, are reportedly barred from buying homes in Beyoglu, which was populated by ethnic minorities during the Ottoman era. The Patriarchate's seminary has been closed since 1971, making it impossible for the Church to train its clergy.
Despite the constraints they face, Baklahorani demonstrates that, at least on the street level, Greeks are more comfortable about expressing their identity. A second, smaller parade was held on Clean Monday in Kurtulus, the former Greek neighbourhood known as Tatavla that has traditionally been home to Baklahorani.

Istanbulites have in recent years begun celebrating the city's native culture. The Sabanci Museum held a major exhibit last year featuring 5,000-year-old artefacts from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the first collaboration between Turkish and Greek museums. Nostalgia for Istanbul's recent, cosmopolitan past has seen publication of cookbooks with Istanbul Greek recipes, rembetiko bands performing weekly in Beyoglu bars and Greek-style tavernas serving meze to boisterous crowds.

"By no means does Baklahorani represent a true revival of Greek community or culture," Rigas says. "But it is still an expression of optimism for the Greek Orthodox of Turkey."