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BP spill response tars reputation

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BP spill response tars reputation

VENICE, La.—As BP P.L.C. claimed some success last week in its efforts to permanently plug a well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, its wider crisis management strategy continues to be regarded as a failure.

The oil giant has endured a media onslaught since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20 killing 11 workers and releasing millions of gallons of oil. Traditional news outlets such as T.V., radio and newspapers have been joined by bloggers, social media groups and individuals using Twitter and Facebook to lambast London-based BP for what's been widely regarded as its inadequate response to the environmental crisis.

While the oil company faces paying out billions of dollars during the next several years to clean up the escaped oil, BP's poor response to the crisis may sully the company's reputation for decades, experts say.

Last week, U.S. scientists tabbed the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico the worst in the country's history, passing the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989. Leading up to that declaration, BP scrambled to control the spill as the huge slick quickly spread over the warm waters of the Gulf.

“This could be offshore drilling's Three-Mile Island....It could set the oil industry back decades,” said Gene Grabowski, senior vp and chairman of the crisis and litigation practice for Washington-based Levick Strategic Communications L.L.C. In 1979, a partial core meltdown at the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in central Pennsylvania resulted in a massive release of radioactive gases and became the U.S.'s worst commercial nuclear power accident. The incident halted the building of nuclear power stations in the United States.

At a news conference last week, President Obama said he is extending a moratorium on new wells for six months and ordered drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico to stop.

In contrast to organizations involved in previous disasters such as Exxon Valdez and Three-Mile Island, BP has had to contend with numerous new media outlets focusing on the company.

“As a company, the first thing you have to understand is the amount of chatter in the online world,” said Scott Marticke, Atlanta-based chief operating officer for Sentiment360, a new-media search and analysis company. “Companies aren't taking enough time to listen in on what people are saying about them...and when it comes to something related to the environment, health or safety, it's something that will not be secret for long. If it's on the Web and we can find it, it's a good bet that competitors, whistle-blowers and consumers can find it.”

As the underground well spewed what scientists now believe is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day, consumers used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to start groups and feeds boycotting and humiliating BP. The Facebook group Boycott BP had more than 181,600 members as of Friday and the parody Twitter feed BPGlobalPR had more than 75,800 followers, far exceeding the official BP Twitter feed BP_America by more than 68,000 followers.

Amy Littleton, vp at Chicago-based public relations firm KemperLesnik, said BP made “missteps” early in the crisis, such as the underestimation of the amount of barrels leaked per day, the failure of BP CEO Tony Hayward's presence early in the situation, and BP's blame shifting in front of Congress.

Mr. Hayward's absence on-site after the disaster was only the first misstep that BP took in a series, according to Jonathan Bernstein, president of Sierra Madre, Calif.-based Bernstein Crisis Management Inc.

“BP is crisis planning on the fly,” Mr. Bernstein said. “It's clear that they didn't have a crisis response plan in place before this happened, even though this is something that is predictable in their line of work and that is inexcusable.”

BP has tried several efforts to prevent oil from spreading throughout the Gulf, with its latest being the “top kill,” where heavy drilling fluid known as mud is pumped into the well to clog the flow of oil from the well and sealed with concrete. However, despite these efforts, which also has included oil booms, a controlled burn of surface oil, storage containment, and siphoning the well, crisis and risk assessment experts said BP's planning and execution of those plans clearly underestimated possible catastrophic or worst-case scenarios.

“The risk assessment (BP) did in support of this project indicates they planned for a small spill as their worst-case-scenario assessment,” said Lawrence Heim, director of Atlanta-based Elm Consulting Group International L.L.C., a safety and environmental management consultancy that assists in providing technical advice and services related to health, safety and environmental management and compliance issues for industrial sectors.

“It's a little silly to think that oil booms would be an effective control mechanism in water that experiences 8-inch to a foot-and-a-half waves...the water just goes right over the top of the booms.”

Mr. Grabowski added that when the crisis began, BP sent the wrong message by saying they would only pay what was appropriate for “legitimate claims.” BP was “already defining what it would pay for before they had an idea of what they were dealing with.”

Further, Mr. Hayward was not on the disaster site until several days after the oil rig sunk, which Mr. Grabowski said made it appear he was detached from the situation and from concerns of the people who live and work along the Gulf Coast.

He said too often companies “fail at thinking like consumers” during a crisis situation, meaning companies only focus on what is at stake for them, rather than those affected by the crisis.

“BP has come off as arrogant in their handling of this situation and they're not getting any support from the U.S. government,” he said.

Sources agree that BP hasn't done enough to show what it is doing in the Gulf, especially showing photos of BP employees helping with the cleanup. With pictures turning up of oil-covered wildlife and oil-soaked wetlands and beaches, Mr. Grabowski and Ms. Littleton said BP needs to be more active in getting control of the images in the media.

Perhaps further compounding the problem is BP's failure to bring in outside help early on in the process, Mr. Bernstein said, adding that if the company had an adequate crisis plan in place, one of the steps would have been to bring in the top five experts in the field, get them on-site and then “brag” about the fact that they have the top people working on the job.

“That would have served well in the court of public opinion,” he said. “Transparency, honesty and humility can go a long way in this situation.”

Messrs. Heim and Marticke do not think BP's reputation as an environmentally friendly company will continue.

“BP's reputation will probably not recover,” Mr. Heim said. “This (spill) will last far longer and it could end up being BP's legacy.”