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Zurich, June 15th, 2010. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has been an unprecedented disaster for BP – but as well for President Obama. This will increase the pressure on BP´s CEO Tony Hayward when he meets the President on Wednesday, June 16th, in Washington. The continuous analysis of American TV news by Media Tenor International, the Zurich-based research institute, shows how the ongoing flood of bad news has not only eroded BP´s share price but the job approval of President Obama as well.

“Obama´s threat to kick the responsible person´s “backside” shows how destitute and frustrated the President is”, explains Roland Schatz, founder and President of Media Tenor International. “He badly needs to show some signs of regaining leadership – and this will lead to more pressure on BP.”

Media coverage of BP has already destroyed half of the value of BP. Obama´s fuelling speculation over whether BP should be able to pay a dividend being a direct threat to investor sentiment. “As the oil spill has become the dominant media issue for the last months, BP is paying the price not only for its unsuccessful reaction to the accident, but as well for its defective communication in this period and in the previous months”, Roland Schatz points out. “Communicating below the threshold of awareness over years has left the company without any trust among journalists.”

The wider implications of the oil spill are becoming clearer with the disaster going on for weeks and the whole extent of the contamination turning out to be much worse than communicated in the beginning. This focus on BP threatens the public image of the whole oil industry, whose media image has been rather fragile for years. The peak oil scenarios of the last years, resource nationalism, global warming and a long chain of accidents have left the industry open to attacks from politicians, environmental activists and journalists. “The Deepwater Horizon oil spill will affect the perception of the whole industry”, says Roland Schatz. “All oil majors will have to go a long way to regain the trust of the public.”

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