Paying the price
The British oil firm is in trouble. But its rivals face many of the same problems
NO ONE calls upon James Baker, an American elder statesman, to solve a trivial problem. George Bush recruited him to defend his interests in Florida during the disputed election of 2000, and more recently to examine ways out of America's morass in Iraq. The United Nations once asked him to settle a 30-year-old conflict in Africa. So it says a lot about the state of BP, a big British oil firm, that it asked Mr Baker to head a panel to assess flaws in its safety regime.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Paying the price”
From the January 20th 2007 edition
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