WASHINGTON: Bob Dudley has been thrown out of Russia and worked in some of the most difficult oil locations around, but his latest challenge, managing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, may be the toughest of his 30 year career.

The BP managing director assumed control of the British firm`s response to the spill on Wednesday, taking over from the much-maligned Tony Hayward, whose propensity for gaffes and perceived insensitivity only undermined his public relations efforts.

Dudley`s first advantage may simply be his ability to talk to Americans with an accent they share; Hayward became the butt of late-night television jokes about his British accent.

But Dudley will also hope to leverage a deeper connection to those worst affected by the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where he spent much of his childhood.

He was born in Queens, New York, but grew up in Mississippi, one of four southern US states now threatened with economic and environmental devastation by the spill.

"I grew up swimming and fishing off of the coast," he said during a June press conference, after touring some of the oil-fouled areas in Louisiana.

"What I saw was painful and emotional and shocking. The images are disturbing on television, but when you see it first-hand it becomes personal," he added.

"It is tough and so tragic and it is painful."

That emotional touch is a far cry from Hayward, who became perhaps best known for publicly stating: "I would like my life back."

He was accused of insensitivity to the suffering of Gulf coast residents who face economic ruin as the oil spill closes fishing areas and slashes tourism income, and was ridiculed for claiming the leak`s environmental impact would be "modest."

Dudley, who holds a Masters degree in management, may be better equipped to handle the public outrage about the spill, which was triggered by the April 20 explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

The son of a US naval officer, Dudley studied chemical engineering at the University of Illinois, before earning his management degree from Arizona`s Thunderbird School of Global Management and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

Married with two children, he has homes in both the United States and Britain, but has spent time in almost every major oil hotspot worldwide.

He began his career with Amoco in 1979, and quickly moved abroad, spending six years working on a deepwater drilling project in the South China Sea.

He later moved to Moscow for Amoco, before joining BP after the two oil firms merged, allowing him eventually to take on his "dream job" working on exploration and production in the Caspian, Angola, Algeria and Egypt.

But Dudley is perhaps best known for his time as president of BP`s joint venture with Russia, TNK-BP, which ended in disaster after tense relations with Russian authorities and shareholders forced him to leave the country and resign.

Despite his experience with TNK-BP, Dudley is known for his work negotiating between his firm and officials and executives around the world.

Last year, he told BP`s internal magazine that he enjoys "the luxury of being able to think about these relationships" and Hayward has described him as "the (BP) management team`s foreign secretary -- or perhaps secretary of state in American terms."

But he is also someone who has been unabashedly proud of `Big Oil,` a less-than-popular sentiment in parts of the Gulf of Mexico of late.

"I`ve been through contractions, expansions and excesses, and each time, someone declares that the role of international oil companies is dead," he told BP Magazine.

"It is not, and I`m excited about the future, and BP`s next century."

BDST: 0945 HRS, 24 June, 2010
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