BP has apologised for the ‘small people’ remark by chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg that angered residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast.
On Wednesday, Svanberg told reporters in Washington: “I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.”
Not well put.
Unsurprisingly,
the ‘small people’ are not happy. A New Orleans resident told ABC News:
“We’re not small people. We’re human beings. They’re no greater than
us. We don’t bow down to them. We don’t pray to them.”
If you’re in a generous mood then Svanberg’s comments can be seen as clumsy rather than deliberately offensive.
The
Swedish BP has just come from a joint press conference with President
Barack Obama, who had talked about the small business owners, the
fishermen and the shrimpers affected by the spill.
Meanwhile,
marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster have noticed
fish and other wildlife fleeing the oil and clustering in cleaner
waters along the coast.
This suggests that their usual habitat
is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as
fish run out of oxygen. The animals are also more susceptible to
predators.
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Tags: Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP oil spill, Florida,
environmental impact, US oil spill, British Petroleum, oil leak, Obama, Carl-Henric Svanberg
