UK: We are all Tony Hayward

Nerves are understandably fraying over the Gulf of Mexico spill, sparking humor and generally odd utterances — particularly in Britain, where people apparently feel less loved by Americans, according to Alistair Burnett, writing here at Foreign Policy, and this piece today by Sarah Lyall and Julia Werdigier in the New York Times. Today in Britain’s Financial Times, Ed Crooks writes that some commentators even feel that BP is undergoing the Russian treatment: Getting shaken down, as Vladimir Putin did when he imprisoned Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and ordered his oil company dismantled. Khodorkovsky, mind you, has spent the last seven years in some of the most remote gulags in Russia. "That analogy may be exaggerated," Crooks allows.

(For the still-unsalved, Google handily provides a list of "Books for British Angry at Americans," including Victory of Death! Stories of the American Revolution, Boston Tea Party: Angry Colonists Dump British Tea, along with mainstays like The Origins and Development of the English Language, Volume 1.)

One of the big questions is whether, given the still-uncontrolled spill, BP can or will pay its dividend to shareholders. BP’s enormous dividend — at 9 percent, it’s at least triple Exxon’s 3 percent yield — is one of the company’s main attractions to investors. I personally think CEO Tony Hayward won’t cut the dividend — the payout may be his only remaining chance to keep his job — and Robin Pagnamenta at the Times of London is indeed reporting today that Hayward has decided to defer the dividend payments until the extent of the bill that BP owes is known.

Yet, some worriers have reached the point of desperation. So we have the widows-and-orphans argument. This goes that among the main victims of a dividend cut will be among society’s most vulnerable citizens.

Here’s Fadel Gheit, the major domo Oppenheimer analyst, advancing this case.

Then there are the truly bold: This video, from the Upright Citizens Brigade, is making the rounds. My wife says it’s cheesy. Judge yourself.

Finally, as long as we are at it, here’s an unrelated item. For those who have wondered how oil tycoons in the world’s frontier countries reach their perch, there’s this insight into the Kazakhstan oil patch by Angella Johnson of Britain’s Daily Mail. It is a profile of 30-year-old Kazakh millionaire Goga Ashkenazi , the former girlfriend of Timur Kulibayev, the ultra-powerful son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, with whom she has a son named Adam. Kulibayev is regarded as Kazakhstan’s most powerful voice in the country’s energy space. Ashkenazi, who has attracted much attention in her adopted home of Britain because of her friendship with Prince Andrew, is CEO of MunaiGas Engineering Group.

Here’s Ashkenazi describing how she and her sister, Meruert, managed to win a deal to build oil supply lines and pumping stations: "The government then gave us the money to put the deal together, to build the structure," and then they simply did it.

There you have it: Present your plan, and get funded by the local government.