The man from BP stood at the lectern Tuesday morning, telling the crowd packing the Tampa Convention Center ballroom about all his company had done to deal with the Deepwater Horizon disaster — the $11 billion spent so far, the 48,000 people deployed. Utsler, who will now be the chief operating officer of BP's gulf coast restoration organization, strongly defended his company and the entire Deepwater Horizon containment and cleanup effort, even controversial moves such as spraying chemical dispersants a mile beneath the ocean — something no one had ever tried before.
"This is an important tool in our toolbox when used right, and we used them right," he told the standing-room-only crowd.
Finally, Billy Nungesser had had enough. Sweating, the Plaquemines Parish, La., council president got up and headed for the exit.
"I had to leave because of my high blood pressure," Nungesser said. Of those thousands of people BP and the Coast Guard dispatched to deal with the disaster, he said, "how many did anything at all to clean up the oil? And how many stopped us from cleaning up the oil?"