—Following weeks of speculation about his future, Hayward is to step down from the company’s top job in October and will be offered a post at the company’s TNK-BP joint venture in Russia, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. Fast-tracked through BP’s heavy bureaucracy by the man he would succeed as CEO, John Browne, Hayward took the top job three years ago promising to focus “like a laser” on safety and change the company’s champagne culture. He was supposed to get BP back to basics, and for most of his tenure shareholders were happy with the results. Then came the rig explosion that set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, and several weeks in which Hayward repeatedly put his foot in his mouth while his company appeared incapable of stopping the gusher.
—Federal biologists in Texas have released hundreds of endangered baby sea turtles into the Gulf of Mexico despite the oil fouling the waters 400 miles away. The Kemp’s ridley turtle hatchlings were released Monday. They’re between 1 and 4 days old. About 165 turtles were released in front of the public. About 1,000 have been freed throughout the night. Thousands of hatchlings have been released since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service decided in June to proceed because Texas hasn’t been hard hit by the BP oil spill.
—The women of Grand Isle are nervous. Used to be, they say, they could walk the streets of their beachside town alone. Now, a waitress won’t let her 14-year-old daughter stroll to the store, a souvenir shop owner is afraid to sit on her porch after dark and a bartender deadbolts her door, a newly purchased gun nearby. The vacationing families and sport fishermen who make this tourist town of 1,500 what it is are absent this summer, replaced by an army of workers brought in by BP to clean up the massive Gulf Coast oil spill. A BP official says some culture clash is understandable, though he’s occasionally seen outright racial bias at work. But talk to some of the mostly white residents, and they don’t directly mention the skin color of the workers, most of whom are black.