Yacht's all, folks

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel dubbed it “a big mistake.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the moment begged for “a better PR adviser.” Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby called for heads to roll.

It was Sunday morning, and once again BP was struggling to get a grip on its image.


The newest firestorm was touched off when the company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, was photographed attending a yacht race off the southern coast of England. His yacht, “Bob,” was in the competition.

The event, coming just days after BP said Hayward would be moved off managing BP’s day-to-day response to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, was “the height of stupidity,” Shelby, a Republican, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I believe myself that he should go,” the Alabama senator said of Hayward. “I don't know how he can represent a company in crisis like BP and ignore what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico."

Emanuel stopped short of calling for Hayward’s ouster, but said the weekend jaunt “part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes,” and acidly referred to Hayward’s infamous lament: “I’d like my life back.”

“To quote Tony Hayward, he has got his life back,” Emanuel said in an interview that aired on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting.”

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a plague-on-both-their-houses take on the weekend as host Chris Wallace compared Hayward’s yacht outing to President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s Saturday golf game.

“All of these guys could use a better PR adviser, but the point is we need to get the oil leak stopped and keep as much as the oil off the shore as we can,” McConnell said. “All the local officials on the Gulf are frustrated as they can be.”

Hayward’s participation in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race was the latest in a string of incidents that have left the company’s public image in tatters. On Thursday, Hayward frustrated lawmakers during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, as he evaded questions about his company’s management of the Gulf disaster. The following day, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg announced Hayward would hand over the Gulf portfolio to BP managing director Bob Dudley.

Svanberg had a foot-in-mouth moment of his own last week, when he referred to Gulf Coast residents as “the small people” after meeting with President Obama at the White House. Svanberg quickly apologized for his choice of words.

Making matters worse for the oil giant, Hayward’s latest fumble coincided with a new prediction that oil could be leaking into the Gulf at a daily rate of 100,000 barrels, or roughly 4 million gallons. Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey, a senior Democrat on energy and climate issues, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had obtained an internal BP document showing the estimate, which is 100 times higher than the company’s initial projections.

“Right from the beginning, BP was either lying or grossly incompetent,” Markey said. “First they said it was 1,000 barrels, then they said it was 5,000 barrels.”

The new projection is also well above the updated estimate released last week by the Obama administration, which put the oil flow between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels a day. BP has been able to contain a fraction of the flow, but the oil is not expected to stop leaking until two relief wells are completed in August.

BP spokesman Robert Wine told the Associated Press that Hayward’s yachting expedition was the first break he’s taken from the oil leak since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April, and said the CEO was “spending a few hours with his family at a weekend.”

Emanuel emphasized that the “substance” of the challenge in the Gulf was ultimately more important than Hayward’s personal behavior.

“People will chew over this,” Emanuel said. “But don't take your eye off the major priorities and the key goals: that is dealing with the problem down in the well, and dealing with the problems of the region … and restoring that coastline to it environmental purity that it had at one point.”