will come back to order when we left off we mister hayward had finished his opening statement will begin with questions i'll begin mister hayward when i heard about the explosion in the gulf immediate company that popped in my brain was bp and that's because a last number of years from texas city where people died in the hundred seventy people were injured the north slope the problems we've had their mvp zone two thousand and seven report on the management accountability project which is stated there was a culture that evolved over the years that seemed to ignore risk tolerate non compliance and accepted in competence so i wasn't surprised when we heard about the explosion in the gulf and bp was part of it since then this committee oversight investigation committee of the energy and commerce committee we have methodically looked at this report and i'm sure you're familiar with that report are you not sir i am and then on jun th chairman waxman i sent you a letter fourteen pages when we talk about the crazy well in the nightmare well quite frankly bp blew you cut corners to save money and time and as the chief executive officer of bp as i stayed in my opening you called for a leader decision making process you called for fewer fewer people in the decision making process he stated individuals need to be accountable for risk and to manage risk therefore the deep bp's leadership manage the risk in this well they did you manage to rest properly it's about much more than words safety is about three things it's about plant it's about people it's about process in the last three years we've invested more than fourteen billion dollars implant integrity but then what happened here i mean the june fourteenth letter we put out the other day we went through five major areas the head of the seals of the oil companies or before this committee tuesday also said you did it wrong they never would have done well this way you made decisions whether to  a casing or the string with the tie back which are one said the tie back would have been safer the lockdown sleeve centralizers instead of doing twenty one as recommended you only do six that defies this safety emphasis does it not we've launched an investigation which was shared with yourself mister chairman and all of your members which is identified seven areas it's identified areas around cement company you said you were here to answer the questions of the american people you were an exploration manager exploration manager with bp you were the director of bp's exploration your vice president of  areas and when they complete every one of those seven key area sir dealt with saving time and saving money and accepting the risk so if we use your own words if you're gonna hold bp accountable then we have to manage the risk should leadership at bp be held accountable here there is no doubt that i have focused on safe reliable operations we've made major changes in everything we do over the last three years we change people what changes have you made since april twentieth when the bp deepwater horizon exploded what changes were made then  made changes with respect to the testing and evaluation of blowout preventers we've made changes with respect to ensuring that people who are likely to be dealing with well i validated for well control procedures and as we learn more about what happened to we will continue to make changes my time just brought up and try to hold members quickly to our time because we want to get through at least one more round let me just ask you this last five years and i've been up here your safety record you have twenty six people did more than one hundred and seventy injured you have the largest bill ever in alaska you now have the largest environmental disaster to hit the united states with no end in sight with this disaster do you believe the us government should continue to allow companies that have poor safety records poor environmental records to explore minerals or oil exploration in our and indeed in the case and that is why amongst all the other reasons i'm so devastated on this accident i agree and under your tenure you said you had the two thousand and seven report that was getting of bp's culture use do we culture i'm not denying that there isn't more to do but we have made dramatic changes in the people we have in our organization the skills and capabilities they have we've invested heavily into that we've changed significantly the contain the oil on the surface and clean it up and that is what my focuses mister burgess for questions because chairman highest priority stopping a league let me just ask mister hayward is your presence here today in any way interfering with that number one task of stopping the leak it is not thank you i'm let me ask you an hour let me just make a statement for clarification i am not going to apologize to you it was after all bp executives who were on that rig beat the executives who ultimately could made the call to stop operations when things became unsafe and ultimately you are the person at the top and you are responsible we lost eleven men on that ray gris transocean and other companies lost eleven men on that rig i don't feel it apologies are in order but mister chairman i do have serious questions about the setup of this fund that we heard about from the white house yesterday and i hope this committee will stay engaged in the oversight of that activity as well it's still a disturbing to me that we have not had one from the federal regulatory side we brought a ton of other people in here in question them but really we need mister salazar here we need whoever that minerals and management people were who expect proved that exploration plan that bp submitted that was woefully inadequate shame on you mister hayward for submitting about shame on us for accepting it was just simply rubber stamp now i've got some questions that i do need to ask bp unfortunately it's not the first time you've been in front of our committee and in two thousand and six although you were not ceo in september of that  year i pulled the transcript last night and look through it again the big oil spill in alaska had to do with the not proper maintenance on the on the pipelines and and when you came in and you said you were going to focus like a laser beam on on safety and certainly that had to be welcome news after texas city after the north slope accident so what safety briefings do you get as your as your office of tv chief executive officer and who provides them to you business streams and what will meet we meet on a bi monthly basis to review the safety performance across the company that process is mirrored down through the company and what type of safety directives then or what type of directives do you issue in terms of safety as a result of those meetings and perhaps would you be willing to share some of that information with the committee as we go forward we can certainly share that information  range from changes to procedures to requirement solve to have people whether i issues with safety cut to come and present to us but somebody record minutes during those meetings and then your directives that come as a consequence of those briefings are following the best practices drilling practices to continue to drill is there any other well to your knowledge in the gulf of mexico that is has been done in the same manner as this well that was being cement procedures and now have the minerals and management service people been there and looked over those with a fine tooth comb everything that we do is subject to regulatory oversight we are you changing your procedures that those there any of those changes are ongoing right now the ones that i've talked about our ongoing well let me ask you this but the you know the question came up about centralizers and and and someone said that they'd rather push more semantic squeeze more cement and get up something stuck i'm not technically savvy enough to know exactly about that but if that's the statement and you're going to push cement and do deal with a fewer number of centralizers to hold this thing steady in the center of the column is there any way to find been followed that would actually given that information icon select question whether it really i'm mostly cement engineer afraid there is of those people were available and for whatever reason they decided not to do that do you think that might have made a difference in the ultimate story of discovery that was my only price woman in the world who briefed you who briefed you on that discovery the person who would have briefed me was would have been the chief executive of exploration and production and them to any other information the difficulties that they had the multiple gasps kicks the losing the tools down the whole length of time they've been over the whole the decisions to move quickly because we spent too much time over this well i had no prior knowledge who would have had that information it certainly the drilling team in the gulf of mexico as you're the ceo of the company and and with you have any sort of technical expert who who helps you with these things you might have been there with respect so we drew hundreds of wells year all around the world i know it's what scared me right now i'm did you have a technical expert who is advising you there on this well because we've heard from other people that there were problems with the bad well it was a dangerous well i'm a shareholder bp which i'm not but if i am how can i didn't happen have comfort that the ceo knows what's going on as far as safety on the rings or is it is it true that it's just all about profit your top priority you would focus on it like a laser your website said safe and reliable operations are integral to bp success i want to ask you whether you think bp has met that commitment that you made when you became c disaster in the gulf is that indicate that you didn't keep that commitment and one of the reasons that i am so distraught could you answer yes or no is that i don't want to know whether you're distraught i want to know whether you think you've kept your commitment we have okay let me ask every day let me follow up on that we had hearing earlier this week with ceos from the other oil companies they were unanimous in their view that you made risky decisions that their companies would not have made and in particular they criticize your decision to install a long single string of casing from the top of the well to the bottom on april nineteenth the day before the blowout they said this well designed choice provided an unrestricted pathway for grass to travel up the well in the annular space that surrounded the casing and of course it blew out the blue out the seal how do you respond to their criticism did bp make a judge and a fundamental misjudgment and selecting the single string of casing i was involved in any of that decision well but i want to know your view of and now did you know what's on it now that you know what your company did pursuant to your laser request that they be attuned to safety do you think that was a mistake the original world design was to run along spring it was approved by the m discussion in the course of the drilling of the world whether a long spring or a seven inch line would be most appropriate that is what i understand based on having looked at the documents and listen to our investigation team the decision to run along spring at least in part was to do with the look long term integrity of the world but let me be fair to you because i'm asking you to look with hindsight as to what happened and the decision that was made but your own engineers warned in advance that this was a risky approach and i'd like to put on the screen what's called the plan review that your engineers prepared in mid april warning against the long string of casing as you can see your engineers said that if you used a long string of casing quote it is unlikely to be a successful cement job you would be unable to fulfill ms regulations and there would be an open annulus to the wellhead and i have that on the screen now those are serious risks a failed cement job a violation of ms safety regulations and open pathway for gas to travel to the top of the well the same document says that if you use the liner and tie back approach which is what exxonmobil and other company said you should have used you would have avoided or less than these risk and here's what the plan review said if you use the liner there would be less issue with landing it's shallow it would be a second barrier to gas in the annulus at a higher chance for a successful cement job now you said th bp was supposed to be focused like a laser on safety yet bp apparently overruled the warnings of its own engineers and chose the more dangerous option how can you explain that decision by bp why were the safety recommendations of your own engineers ignored i wasn't involved in any of the decision making it's clear that there was some discussion amongst the engineering team and an engineering judgment was taken it's clear to me that you don't want to answer questions because isn't it true that you've served your life in the inn in bp have only recently become the ceo but haven't you been in this business most of your professional life i'm putting this business twenty years twenty eight years so you should have some knowledge about these issues and i sent you a letter in advance asking you're going to be asked these questions and to be prepared to answer it haha how can you explain this decision when you ignore thank you yourself but people that work for you who should have known that was your directive to be a laser on safety how could they have ignored these warnings from people right within your company was clearly a discussion between the engineering seen as to what was the most appropriate course of action to take an engineering judgment was taken that involved long term integral it was more than engineering judgment because our april fifteenth there's a document which is five days before the blowout that said that using the safer liner will add an additional seven to ten million dollars to the completion cost the same document calls it the single string of casing the best economic case for bp and the conclusion i draw from these documents is that bp used more dangerous well designed to save seven million dollars what do you think about that what your response  mexico as i understand it again the long string is not unusual design in the gulf of mexico well i understand it all the burdens witness who is grieving interviewed by our staff that only to   a few million dollars and you're drilling eighteen thousand feet below the see if you made mistakes the consequences of those would be catastrophic and in fact it turned out to be i 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 about for the decisions have made the accident more likely and i can't pass judgment on those decisions even though you've worked twenty eight years in the oil industry you're the bp ceo and you said lays it like a laser you're going to a safety is the biggest issue and you have people under you making these kinds of decisions and now you're reviewing them do you disagree with the conclusion that this was riskier to use this particular well lining unprepared to draw conclusions about this until such time as the investigation is concluded well this is an investigation that's what this committee is doing is that investigatory committee are and we expect you to cooperate with us are you failing to cooperate with other investigators as well because they're going to have a hard time reaching conclusions if you stonewall them which is what we seem to be getting today unless stonewalling i simply was not involved in decision making process either looks at the documents expired night i i'm just amazed at this testimony mister hayward you're not taking responsibility you're you're you're kicking the can down the road and acting as if you have nothing to do with this company and nothing to do with the decisions i find that  legitimate areas for concern mister chairman they're very what legitimate areas for concern so we reach legitimate conclusions that people could then baste the decision yet cut corners to save money and we had this accident correct doesn't appear that you're very concerned about them are you on i'm very concerned that we get to the bottom of this incident and understand exactly what happened such that we can  never happens again easy to say mister chairman i just a request please if mister hayward could move the microphone a bit closer i'm having difficulty hearing right i think we all in the united states is there a deficient safety culture at bp that led to the deepwater horizon and other disasters like the refinery explosion in texas city texas in the alaskan oil pipeline spill tone from the top by saying great clearly safe reliable operations or a number one priority we've invested billions of dollars in the integrity of their plants we've recruited many thousands of engineers our company including many from other industries such as a nuclear industry and other parts of the chemical and oil and gas industry and we have changed fundamentally whole approach to the management of our operations through the implementation of significant changes to our processes well it doesn't seem like that i mean if you look at the reports what happened on the deeper aizen doesn't look like many safety procedures have changed much at all and mister hayward do you feel that your safety record compared to other major oil companies is is a is comparable as i said it's clear that we had some serious issues to do with in the two thousand and five two thousand and six timeframe and we have worked hard to improve safety performance since that time for it but it doesn't seem to be changing mister hayward at your safety performance doesn't and it has some highlights of your safety procedures bp had seven hundred and sixty safety violations and you've paid build millions of dollars three hundred and seven seventy three million in fines to avoid criminal prosecution and manipulating the propane markets also if you look at other industry sir let's take some of your competitors for example sunoco you had set seven and sixteen violations and five years sunoco had eight safety violations conocophillips had eight safety violations in the same time you had seven hundred and sixty citco had to safety violations the same time you had seven hundred and sixty and exxonmobil had one safety violation the same time you had seven hundred and sixty how in the heck do you explain to four years you think the changes you made in that time period you're talking about when your ceo understand why you're saying that do you think that they were using those measures and and protocols on the deeper aizen to my best results of the investigations before we draw conclusions are you had to look at some of the some of the results of any kind of your internal investigation internally your investigation did it show any kind of breakdown it's showing that you wouldn't like that you with your protocols you said you put in place where any of those short cut it the investigation is still ongoing as you know it's identified seven areas the cement the casing the integrity pressure well control procedures and three failures of the blowout prevent concluded will make the judgment well i i'd say that this problem is with your organization in your safety in the culture of your company safety culture and not a culture of our domestic oil and gas producers as we can see they haven't had the kind of problems you've had with cutting corners on safety they have a lot of redundancies contingency plans i venture to say that this may not have happened if one of these other companies was operating that rig would you say children do you think the other companies have different restrictor or a stricter guidelines with their safety and spend more money on it and you probably compare yourself to other companies i'm sure hayward you had two choices are using single casing or tie back the risks are substantial associated with single casing which is what bp chose please answer yes or no can you assur under under oath that was not a decision made to save time and money i wasn't part of that decision making process as far as it i was not part of that decision making process recall the time that was saved the would have been time saved would you sit submit that for the record place now you had the option of using a number of instead of the record recommended twenty one was not made to save time and money well i was i was not involved in that decision so it's impossible for me to answer that question right could you tell us how much money for bp shaved by not and approved by the nms thank you did bp are can you assure us under oath again that the decision not to fully circulate the blood was not made to save money and time i can't answer that question because i was that the decision not to install such black gowns sleeve was not made save time and money that was a decision i was no party to how much did the installing the lockdown sleeve save bp i don't know spill response plans sorry congressman so sorry what was the question please did you have a response plan in the event of a favor of well we had a response plan which we have it was the date of that response  plan please inform us for the record whether or not that plan was are approved by the mineral of management service and on what date ask them questions verjus as you know that we have seven here after all these hearings is really disturbing to me i reclaim my time mister burgess is you know will we have a methodical method we've been using in this investigation we've gone through it very methodically you know we have at least two more hearings one was scheduled for tuesday but you're requesting my request remove the back lot more there will be at least two more hearings will do our job will have all parties here before this committee at the appropriate time because clearly mister hayward is not prepared to answer the questions we need to get