BP is struggling to deliver on its performance targets because of inexperienced staff, equipment shortages and disasters including the Texas City refinery fire and the listing of the Thunder Horse oil platform, Tony Hayward, BP’s head of exploration, said in a recent speech to staff in Houston, Texas.

BP’s oil production chief said there was a danger of “overheating” in respect of BP’s performance upstream, noting that one in every eight staff in the exploration business had been on the payroll for less than six months. “We need to cool it,” he told his audience.

In a morale-boosting address to his own staff, Mr Hayward admitted that management had not been listening to the troops and he confessed to a “leadership style that is probably too directive and doesn’t listen sufficiently well”.

Mr Hayward insisted yesterday that his comments were addressed to himself, not Lord Browne of Madingley, the chief executive. “My critical remarks were made at me and my own senior team,” he said.

Mr Hayward’s admission that BP was coping with a large number of new staff reflects a widespread manning problem in the oil industry. After a large shake-out in the late 1990s when vast numbers of personnel were laid off, oil companies are scrambling to re-hire. According to a BP spokesman, the geosciences unit is dominated by older staff and new entrants with few experienced mid-lifers.

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