BP chief Svanberg summoned to meet Obama

WASHINGTON: BP Plc chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg is being summoned to Washington for a meeting with US president Barack Obama as politicians step up pressure on the company to settle damage claims and suspend the dividend.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the government’s national incident commander, requested the June 16 meeting in a letter addressed to Svanberg at the company’s London headquarters on Thursday. He asked for the chairman and other “appropriate” company representatives to meet with senior administration officials to discuss the company’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Allen said Obama will “participate in a portion” of the session.

“The BP Deepwater Horizon spill has had a profound impact on Americans living in the Gulf region and time is of the essence in resolving these issues,” Allen wrote. A government team of scientists said yesterday the damaged well may have been gushing as much as 40,000 barrels of oil a day, twice as much as previous estimates. The meeting will be Obama’s first direct communication with BP representatives since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 people and triggered the spill. It also comes as some US lawmakers are calling on BP to suspend its dividend to pay for cleanup and economic losses and questioning the integrity of the company’s public statements.

BP has received the invitation “and an appropriate senior delegation would of course be glad to attend,” company spokesman Max McGahan said in a telephone interview.