Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, has signalled for the first time that his job could be under threat if the company is unable to swiftly resolve the oil slick crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr Hayward admitted that, while he felt under no immediate pressure to step down, his career was likely to hinge on the company’s ability to end the crisis.

“I think I will be judged by the response,” he said in an interview at BP’s US headquarters in Houston. “I don’t feel my job is on the line but of course that might change.”

Mr Hayward — who has been in the US since shortly after the fatal accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20 — revealed that he had difficulty sleeping and that he was refusing to watch television or newspaper reports about the accident.

“I don’t want my judgment to be clouded by what has been written,” he said. “I will stay here until we have fixed it.”

He added that he was “genuinely proud” of the company’s efforts to stem the leak from the sunken rig, which measures 5,000 barrels per day and have so far proved unsuccessful. He said that BP – whose market valuation has fallen by $30 billion (£20 billion) since the accident — would survive despite claims that it could face damages and costs exceeding $10 billion.

“I feel the company can deal with this and we will get through,” he said. “We will fix this — the only question is when.”

Mr Hayward said that he had received a text message of support from Lord Browne of Madingley, his predecessor, and had also been backed by long-term shareholders and by the group’s new chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, who visited the Houston operation last week.

It also emerged that that Mr Hayward has received hate mail and is being bombarded with calls from US federal officials, who declared their intention to keep a “boot at the throat of BP” amid fierce recriminations for one of the worst oil spills in US history.

“The Cabinet now has my personal mobile phone number and I am getting a lot of calls,” he said, although he said that relations with the US Administration remained positive.

Speaking after meeting with the US Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Mr Hayward acknowledged that the accident was likely to have a profound and lasting impact the offshore oil industry.

He played down suggestions, though, that it could lead to a ban on offshore drilling. “It will undoubtedly be a transforming event in the industry … But Apollo 13 did not stop the space programme,” he said.

He said that investigations into the accident would focus on the blowout preventor — the key piece of equipment that failed on the sunken rig — which he said had been subpoenaed by US investigators.

He said that it would be retrieved from the seabed and subjected to forensic analysis to establish the cause.

Source :  http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7125186.ece