Protesters removed from BP AGM
A number of protesters were ejected from BP’s Annual General Meeting today after attempting to storm the stage.
The group, dressed in matching T-shirts, were carried out of the Excel Centre in east London by security guards as BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg was involved in a heated discussion over oil extraction in Canadian tar-sands.
The group approached the stage in the auditorium, where the entire BP board was sitting, but were prevented from climbing on to the platform.
Mr Svanberg paused the meeting, attended by thousands of shareholders, while the activists were removed and added that there had been a “little excitement”.
The protesters were ejected after a group of fishermen and women hit by the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster were denied entry to the AGM.
The group, who say their livelihoods were destroyed by the oil spill which followed the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, were due to attend the meeting today.
But a BP spokesman said the group, which included Diane Wilson who protested during then-chief executive Tony Hayward’s evidence to a US Congressional committee hearing, were judged to be a threat to other shareholders.
As a result they were excluded from the meeting.
Louisiana shrimp fisherwoman Tracy Kuhns, speaking outside the meeting, said she was angry, frustrated and embarrassed at being refused entry to the AGM by security officials.
“It was humiliating, like being treated like a criminal. We aren’t here to cause trouble. We just wanted to have our voices heard. The shareholders need to hear it.
“We understand a business is supposed to make money, but you have to pay your costs before you get your profits.”
She said BP had damaged her community, its businesses, the environment and people’s health, including through chemicals they had sprayed to disperse the oil, and was not paying for what it had done. Her shrimp boat has not been out fishing since the oil disaster last April.
“We have dolphins washing up all the time, dead turtles washing up everywhere, starfish and worms off the bottom. It’s not gone, it’s there, and BP is not paying the claims.”
She added: “I’m thinking they must be really scared of us, they don’t want the stockholders to hear what’s really happening. They haven’t really cleaned it up, they’re not paying all the loss of the businesses, they’re not paying for the health damage.
“They’re not going to make our communities whole, because they want the profit.”
Inside the meeting, Mr Svanberg tried to interrupt US activist and author Antonia Juhasz as she read a statement from Keith Jones, father of Gordon Jones, one of the 11 men who died when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded last April.
She was then given an opportunity to read part of the statement, which began: “I ask why was Gordon taken from those who love him so. This wasn’t an act of God, a blow-out that was inevitable.”
In the statement, Mr Jones said the blow-out could have been prevented, and that completing the well safely would just have taken a little more time. And he accused BP of taking chances with the safety of those on the rig.
“Were you, he asks, just too greedy to wait, you had to make more money faster?” Ms Juhasz said.
“You were rolling the dice with my son’s life and you lost,” the statement ended.
In response to her comments, BP chief executive Bob Dudley read out the names of the 11 men who died when the rig exploded.
A BP spokesman said the group of affected fishermen and women had been excluded because: “We have responsibility to run an orderly meeting that allows our shareholders to vote on resolutions and engage with the board.
“If we believe allowing individuals in may put this at risk we are in our rights to refuse access.”
