WikiLeaks Obtains Copy of Tony Hayward’s Resignation Letter, Shares It Exclusively with The Daily Goat

Tony Hayward’s resignation letter was obtained by WikiLeaks.  The Daily Goat was given exclusive access to the letter.  We are sharing it here with you.

July 27^th, 2010

Dear Mr. Anders Eslander
BP, Chairman

Having now brought this organization through its most challenging period in the corporation’s history, it is with much satisfaction and some sadness that I hereby tender my resignation as CEO of BP so that I may handle BP’s most pressing matters in our Russian venture, BP-TNK.

However, before I depart, I would like to take a few moments to reflect upon my many successes as CEO.

As CEO from 2007 – 2010, I spearheaded the company’s most successful and ambitious cost reduction effort ever undertaken.   Under my leadership, we significantly modified the design of our ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore oil drilling rigs.  We did away with BP’s previous profligate spending on unnecessary redundancies, expensive monitoring and warning systems, cost prohibitive on-site engineering support and heavy construction materials.

In its place now are first-order fail safe measures, a weekly visual inspection process coupled with a Morse code blinking light warning system, a engineering summer intern program to provide inexpensive process improvement suggestions and an eco-friendly initiative to use renewable resources like wood in our construction rather than steel and concrete.

I am proud that my team and I left no stone unturned, identifying even seemingly minor cost savings such as:

• Replacing the expensive lithium Duracell batteries in our blowout preventers with the much cheaper Sunbeam brand carbon-zinc variety found in the checkout aisle at the Dollar Store.
• Eliminating costly weather tracking devices and instead providing all rig foremen an iPhone with the weather.com app installed
• Removing all life vests on the rig and replacing them with the far less expensive flotation noodles
• Eliminating two life boats from the rig and changing our muster drill procedures to read, “Each evacuating person must allow another evacuee to sit on his or her lap”

Collectively, the savings from these initiatives were minuscule compared to our enormous profits, but they served to send a powerful message to our employees that we had entered a new era, the Hayward era.  Gone were the days of wasteful spending.  Going forward we would be a frugal organization, working with our shareholders’ interests, and only our shareholders’ interests, in mind at all times.

However, my relentless focus on cost was not limited to cuts in areas related to employee welfare and safety.  Under my leadership, we also engineered costs out of producing and maintaining our expensive rigs.  Well, technically we did not use engineers in the process so maybe “engineered costs” is a poor choice of words, but we did use some computer aided drafting technicians from America’s elite University of Phoenix and together we identified and implemented substantial cost saving measures.

For example, our newest rigs, including the deepwater Atlantis platform in the Gulf of Mexico, now exclusively use PVC piping instead of the much more expensive steel pipes used in our legacy rigs.  While the savings on a per-foot basis may seem modest, when you consider that we run the piping five- to seven-thousand feet down and then even further into the earth’s crust, the value of switching to PVC becomes massive.

Despite the objections of our metallurgists, rig workers’ union, an engineer who caught wind of the change, one of the CAD techs and all of our attorneys, I believe that the oil situation in the Gulf validates my decision.  The pipe that snapped was made of steel, not PVC.  Had it been PVC, we could have just bought a new coupler or elbow or that spinny thing that tightens it down at Home Depot and fixed the leak in no time.

I am fully confident that our next catastrophic oil disaster, which most likely will occur at the Atlantis Platform based on internal memos I read spelling out the unresolved OSHA safety violations and on the pleadings for help from the platform foreman and manager, will be much easier to fix thanks to the changes implemented under my tenure.

Furthermore, we generated additional, tremendous capital expenditure savings by swapping out the concrete and steel platform that we have used for decades and replacing those materials exclusively with a Thompson’s Water Seal pre-treated pine construction.  Not only is pine 98% cheaper than the rebarred concrete and steel combination historically used, but wood also floats.  So when the next rig blows, we should be able to recover the thing rather than donating it to the Americans as an artificial reef—which, by the way, is how I instructed accounting to treat the Deepwater Horizon.  The combination of using the accelerated depreciation schedule for the sunken rig and tagging it as a charitable donation resulted in a $4 billion tax credit that we can apply in Q3.

As you are aware, my accomplishments are not limited merely to cost savings.  For the last three years, I received consistent “meets expectations” marks on my bi-annual personal development plan for my key performance objectives (excluding my 2010 mid-year review).  Those objectives were:

• Do not cause a catastrophic environmental disaster
• Do not embarrass the BP Corporation repeatedly
• Do not enter into any additional deals with state sponsors of terror (excluding the Persian Sands Oil Field deal with Iran that you and the board personally approved in 2009)
• And, do not smoke crack.  I am proud to say that I have remained completely narcotic-free for the last three years.  I truly took to heart the advice that you gave me in 2007 when you said, ‘geologists study rocks, they don’t smoke them in crack pipes.’  Trust me, the dangers of mixing crack and work was brought home the day that the Texas City plant exploded while I was plant manager.

While these are not an exhaustive list of my accomplishments, for example, I left off my most recent success, returning the indigenous penguins, walruses and orcas to a healthy, vibrant Gulf coast, I think that it is clear to all that I have earned my $17 million severance and the opportunity to continue on at BP in a new capacity.  I look forward to a life that is even better than the one that I once wanted back.

As Louie Armstrong, a New Orleans native, once sang, “What a Wonderful World.”

Sincerely,

Tony Hayward

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