US Edition 
Tony Hayward, the BP chief who vowed to make safety and reliability his top priorities
Tony Hayward, the £3m-a-year chief executive of BP, should have been celebrating his third anniversary as the boss of Britain’s second-largest company this month.
Instead, the 52-year-old is facing the biggest test of his life after taking charge of BP’s response to what is set to become the biggest oil spill in history.
The oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana which killed 11 men and led to the crisis was all the more shocking for Mr Hayward because he made it clear that safety was his number one priority when he took over from Lord Browne in 2007.
BP had been beset by problems in the US, including the Texas City refinery explosion in 2005, which killed 15 people, and the 2006 Alaska oil spill, and Mr Hayward said he would focus “like a laser” on safety.
In an interview before he became chief executive, he described how the death of a worker on an operation he was leading in Venezuela shaped his opinions.
He said: “I went to the funeral to pay my respects. At the end of the service his mother came up and beat me on the chest. ‘Why did you let it happen?’ she asked. It changed the way I think about safety. Leaders must make the safety of all who work for them their top priority.”
He listed another of his priorities as “conducting our operations without damaging the environment”.
Like Lord Browne before him, the youthful Mr Hayward is a BP “lifer”, having joined the firm straight from university in 1982.
The oldest of seven children, he was born in Slough, Berks., and went to a grammar school in Windsor, where he excelled on the sports field, captaining the football team.
He went on to study geology at Aston University in Birmingham, passing with a first class honours degree, before taking a PhD in geology at Edinburgh University.
Headhunted by several oil companies, he had made his mind up to join Mobil before BP’s chief geologist rang him and persuaded him to change his mind.
He began his career as a rig geologist in the North Sea and later travelled to oilfields from China to Canada before being appointed Lord Browne’s executive assistant in 1990 after impressing his boss during a leadership conference.
He later described working for Lord Browne as “the ultimate learning experience” and from then on he was groomed as a possible successor.
He was promoted to exploration manager of BP’s Colombia operations in 1992 and became head of exploration and production in 2003.
A keen fan of West Ham United football club, Mr Hayward lives near Sevenoaks, Kent, with his wife Maureen, a former BP geophysicist, and their children Kieran and Tara.
He remains a keen sportsman and lists sailing and competing in triathlons among his interests.