LONDON—Less than 48 hours from throwing him a Going Away Party at the Piccadilly Circus Chuck E. Cheese, BP decided to hang on to their erstwhile, embattled CEO Tony Hayward, offering him a position in Russia overseeing the development of an underwater pipeline network for the English oil behemoth he ran just days ago.
Hayward, who’s set to maintain his board position until November, will be earning almost $2 million a year to spearhead BP’s creation of a pipeline that will equally distribute future oil spills around the globe. “It’s going to be a challenge,” said Hayward while playfully punching at a 6-foot-tall cork, one of the many gag gifts he would have received at his Going Away Party. “But I’m not sure why they need to stick me in Russia. Bloody hell, I’m a yachtsman. You can’t wear Topsiders in the snow. I’m beginning to think moving to Russia might be some form of punishment.”
Robert Dudley, BP’s managing director who will replace Hayward on October 1st, will be the company’s first American CEO, and has been their front man in charge of oil spill recovery.
According to Dudley, “Tony’s appointment in Russia is definitely not a form of punishment. Well, the Russia part is,” giggled Dudley. “But the pipeline is for real. I just want to ensure we spread the sludge equally, efficiently. I’m hoping our future oil spills will only hose up beaches, not totally devastate them…and certainly not ones in the United States.
“I grew up in Mississippi,” Dudley continued. “The beaches back home look like fudge brownies. Trust me, our next spill will be routed to the English Channel. Let’s see Hayward sail through a sea of Pennzoil.”
With losses from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill estimated to be anywhere from $30 billion to $60 billion, Dudley insists that BP will be a much, much leaner operation in the future. “I think we’ll be cutting approximately 10% of our workforce in the next 6 months. For instance, I don’t think we’ll keep our Disaster Recovery Division. I’m confident our next oil spill will do just fine without them.”
Hayward, whose pension package is valued at over $16 million, will also enjoy rights to performance program shares valued at another $10 million.
“I’m O.K. with how it all turned out,” Hayward forlornly stated while flipping through an English-Russian dictionary. “I’ll be making enough rubles to purchase 90% of the real estate in Moscow. I might buy Lenin Square, just because I can…maybe put in a carnival, name it Haywardland or Tonytown. Have lots of bloody clowns, monkeys and freaks running about. Perhaps a wave pool covered in an oil slick.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting
