Tony Hayward, the BP America CEO during the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2012, after being pilloried by environmentalists and pounded by the press, made it worse by saying he wanted his life back. Now he does -- working to produce more oil from the promising fields of northern Iraq.

"If there’s a public villain of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill -- one person who, rightly or not, will be remembered for the deadly blowout, the black slick and all that followed -- it’s probably Tony Hayward. ...

And yet here he is now, looking so cool and relaxed, so unlike the Tony Hayward we know. He’s sitting, open-collar casual, in a comfortable corner office here in Mayfair, not far from his old headquarters at BP. ...
Mr. Hayward, it turns out, has his life back."

Stanley Reed reports for the New York Times September 1, 2012. [2]