BP spends $1m a week on adverts since blast

Oil giant BP will reveal it has spent more than €1m (€785,000) a week on television and radio advertising since the oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, it was reported today.

The under-fire company is expected to deliver a report to the US House of Representatives’ energy and commerce committee tomorrow. The committee had demanded to know how much money BP had spent on advertising and marketing since the disaster on April 20.

The company intends to cooperate with the committee’s demands, although no formal response has yet been submitted, and will reveal at least €1m (€785,000) a week have been spent on network television, cable and radio advertising in the past 18 weeks, the Sunday Telegraph said.

The blast in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in the deaths of 11 rig workers, an oil spill that caused catastrophic pollution throughout the region and the departure of chief executive Tony Hayward.

The American adverts feature BP employees, mostly involved in the clean-up process, explaining what the company is doing to restore the areas affected.

The advertising campaign was criticised by President Barack Obama, who warned BP: “What I don’t want to hear is, when they’re spending that kind of money on their shareholders and on TV advertising, that they’re nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf who are having a hard time.”

In its letter to BP’s US chairman Lamar McKay, Congressman Henry Waxman, who chairs the energy and commerce committee, asked the company to provide “information about BP’s spending on corporate advertising and marketing relating to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and relief, recovery and restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico”.

He asked for charts showing the amounts spent, by geographic area, on advertising and marketing from April 20 to August 16, the date of the letter, and for the same period in 2009.

A BP spokesman today said: “In our advertising in the USA following the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, our objective has been to create informational advertising to assure people that we will meet our commitments and tell them how they can get help – especially claims. It is an important tool to help us be transparent about what we are doing and what is happening.”

He added that BP would not comment on advertisement spending ahead of its response to the committee.

BP estimates the costs of the response to the oil explosion so far at $6.1bn (€4.8bn).