BP Exec Carl-Henric Svanberg Sorry About 'Small People' Comment

(June 17) -- Apologies from BP are piling up.

After meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday, the company's chairman tried to say he's sorry about the worst oil spill in American history, but instead made a gaffe that's angered Gulf Coast residents even more -- and prompted yet another apology.

"We care about the small people," Carl-Henric Svanberg, who is Swedish, told reporters. "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care. But that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people."

The comment stoked ire among business owners, residents, fishermen and shrimpers affected by the spill, who are already angry about how oil has fouled their shores and local economy, and don't take kindly to being called "small."

"We're not small people. We're human beings. They're no greater than us. We don't bow down to them. We don't pray to them," Justin Taffinder of New Orleans told The Washington Post.

The mayor of Orange Beach, Ala., Tony Kennon, chuckled when he heard Svanberg's remark. "They can call me small, miniature, they can call me anything they want. Just write the check and send it to us," he told The Associated Press.

Twitter has been abuzz with the controversy. "How big of him!" wrote one user. "Somebody please make T-shirts that say: 'BP: We care about the small people.'... I'll buy the first one!" wrote another.

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Later a BP spokesman told the AP that Svanberg, who speaks English as a second language, made a "slip in translation." And the oil company executive issued a formal apology.

"I spoke clumsily this afternoon, and for that, I am very sorry," Svanberg said in a statement. "What I was trying to say -- that BP understands how deeply this affects the lives of people who live along the Gulf and depend on it for their livelihood -- will best be conveyed not by any words but by the work we do to put things right."

It's the latest gaffe for BP, a British company whose reputation has been roiled by the April explosion on its Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and sent millions of gallons of crude into waters off America's shores.

Earlier this month, BP CEO Tony Hayward was criticized for suggesting that he too is one of the oil spill's victims. "There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I'd like my life back," he said.

Like Svanberg, Hayward too had to issue an apology afterward, saying he made a "hurtful and thoughtless comment."