• Eco-warriors give London small taste of spill pain

    By F. Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com staff

    LONDON – As BP CEO Tony Hayward resigned under a cloud Tuesday, thousands of British motorists got an unexpected reminder of the oil spill that's wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico.

    Protesters with the environmental group Greenpeace said they shut off fuel supplies at 46 BP gas stations across London just in time for the morning rush-hour. Small teams of activists used a standard shut-off switch to stop the flow of fuel oil at the targeted stations. The switches were then removed to prevent most BP outlets in the capital from opening.

    Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

    Demonstrators stand outside a BP petrol station, which they have barricaded with fences, in London on Tuesday.

    And to ensure there was no chance of drivers buying gas, demonstrators in fluorescent vests and helmets locked green metal fences around some sites.

    "What BP needs to do is not just change CEOs it needs to actually come up with a new strategy," Greenpeace U.K.’s chief executive John Sauven said at one of the shuttered stations in Camden, north London.

    Sauven said BP must live up to its pledge to move "beyond petroleum" and stop focusing on squeezing oil from places like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada's tar sands and the fragile Arctic wilderness.

    'Holding us to ransom'
    Anna Jones, who was one of the handful up at dawn to ensure gas stations were shuttered, took a harder line.

    "Big companies like BP are holding us to ransom, chasing profits at the expense of us," the 29-year-old part-time dance teacher said. "The generation before us is largely responsible and the next generation coming up will have to deal with the consequences."

    A BP spokesman described the group's protest as "an irresponsible and childish act which is interfering with safety systems." The firm claimed that only a handful of stations had been prevented from opening.

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    Londoners had mixed views on Greenpeace's actions.

    Daniel Watson, a 41-year-old teacher and tuba player, said BP should recognize the problems of global warming and dependence on petroleum products.

    "We are still living in the illusion that we can live on fossil fuels indefinitely," he added. "There is this kind of approach that it is somebody else’s problem."

    Golden handshake
    Big firms also need to stop handing out big packages to disgraced executives, he said. Hayward's golden handshake included a $1.6 million payoff and pension pot valued at about $17 million.

    "We need controls so that doing a bad job doesn’t get rewarded," Watson said.

    Steve, who has driven a London cab for 37 years and only gave his first name, said he wanted to do something to "save the whales" but branded the protests targeting gas station as "stunts."

    However, Hayward's payout and the behavior of many other executives left the cabbie annoyed.

    "Some of cleverest guys can be the stupidest when it comes to the real world – I see that in my job all the time."

    But not everyone thought Greenpeace was on the right track.

    "Is everybody going to skip driving cars, heating our houses, flying? Get a grip,” said Kathy Wallace, a Canadian who was on her way home to Scotland. “The environment is going to hell anyway, we've already ruined it. All we can do is control the situation."

  • Hayward hopes to reassure Moscow

    BP CEO Tony Hayward is expected to visit Russia soon to try to reassure President Dmitry Medvedev that the oil company is not on the brink of financial collapse as a result of the Gulf of Mexico spill, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

    Russia and the U.S. are BP's biggest areas of operation, with the former providing nearly 25 percent of the company's oil.

    The FT reported that Hayward wants to meet Medvedev to reassure him that BP can withstand the liabilities from the spill and to discuss whether the company will sell some of its Russian assets to help fund the Gulf cleanup. The timing of the trip remains uncertain, it said.

    Word of Hayward's trip comes a day after BP decided to shift responsibility for public response to the spill to one of the company's top-ranking Americans, Bob Dudley.

    Dudley, the company's managing director, will take over as BP's point man on the spill response, reporting to Hayward, who has been widely criticized for tone-deaf comments and yachting amid the crisis.

    The Associated Press reports that Dudley is no stranger to tough situations, having protected his company's interests in rough dealing in Russia even after he was barred from the country. Perhaps most importantly, he is a fresh face for the oil giant as it attempts to fix the spill and protect its future.

    -- Mike Brunker