What started as a better week for BP, ended with another potential PR disaster.
On a positive note, the brand finally plugged its oil well in the Gulf of Mexico which, for three months had relentlessly spewed millions of barrels of global bad PR.
President Barack Obama sounded a note of guarded optimism:
“We’re moving in the right direction, but I don’t want us to get too far ahead of ourselves,” he warned reporters at the White House.
However, just as the company sealed leaks in the Gulf, further PR slicks appeared in the press.
Reportedly, in order secure drilling rights, BP approached the British government to sign a prisoner-transfer agreement with Libya.
BP strongly denies the claim.
However, many in the press pondered if alleged deals had anything to do with the release of Al-Megrahi, only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
BP faces assertions that, to secure permission to drill for oil off Libya’s Mediterranean coast, it helped with the Libyan intelligence officer’s release. (Al-Megrahi served only eight years of the life sentence handed down to him in 2001).
Most of the 270 victims in the Pan Am bombing were American.
The U.S. Senate’s foreign relations committee will hold hearings on July 29 to explore BP’s involvement in Al-Megrahi’s freedom.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who opposed Al-Megrahi’s early release, makes his first official visit next week to the White House.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill MacAskill told The Associated Press:
“We had no communication from the oil company and we had no support or assistance from the British government.”
However, Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said:
“The evidence here may be circumstantial but if I were a prosecutor, I’d love to take this case to a jury.”
Jonathan Gabay
www.brandforensics.co.uk
Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 12:23 pmand is filed under BP brand, BP PR disaster, Brand expert, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
