KEY POINTS:
NEW YORK - BP has replaced the head of its operations in Alaska in management changes aimed at shoring up its plummeting reputation in the United States.
The oil giant said yesterday it was recalling Steve Marshall to London after a five-year stint in Alaska marred by the state's largest on-land oil spill and repeated failures to tackle dangerous corrosion in pipelines.
The final straw was BP's decision to shut down production from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in August, which sent oil prices soaring and brought the company under fire in Congress.
BP's reputation in the US had already been sullied by last year's explosion at a refinery in Texas, where 15 people died because, according to federal investigators, the company had cut costs.
Marshall, who has been at BP for 29 years, will head up a "school of best practice", based in London, which BP said was another sign of its commitment to promoting operational safety and environmental sensitivity.
BP said Marshall's five years in Alaska had been "a long stint". Doug Suttles, the president of BP's operations on the Russian island of Sakhalin, will take over as president of BP Exploration Alaska on January 1.
At congressional hearings into the Prudhoe Bay shutdown in September, Marshall bore the brunt of lawmakers' anger at the company.
He told them that, when he transferred to the state in 2001, whistleblowers were already raising concerns about BP's safety record and alleging that it was ignoring potentially serious corrosion in the pipelines.
He said he had aimed to "resurrect trust and respect between employees and BP management" and to investigate the safety record, but admitted that some of the "philosophic changes during my tenure ... are still a work in progress."
Civil lawsuits filed over the debacle claim that BP was ignoring contractors' concerns in the run-up to the March 2006 oil spill, which released about 1 million litres of oil into the Arctic wilderness.
The decision to move Marshall is the latest in a string of executive changes.
Robert Malone was appointed as head of BP's American operations in June, replacing Ross Pillari, who was retiring.
Colin Maclean, a former manager of BP refineries in Scotland, Australia and Indiana, was chosen to take over the Texas City refinery from manager Don Parus in May 2005, two months after the explosion.
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