BP chief: Oil industry ‘perplexed’ by hostility it faces in the US

BP CEO Robert Dudley says public hatred of oil companies in the United States is an anomaly in the world.

Bloomberg Businessweek, in a new interview, asked him “why do people hate oil companies?”

“People in oil and gas are sort of perplexed by this. In most places, countries are really proud of their energy industries. They’re thought of as a good thing, as part of the progress in bringing prosperity to the country,” Dudley told the magazine.

{mosads}“But it’s very different here. People don’t like having to pay for something that they have to go to every day, whether it’s filling up your car or — you don’t like to get the electric bill every month or the water bills,” he continues.

Elsewhere, Dudley keeps up his campaign against what he calls fraudulent damage claims the company is being forced to pay to people who suffered “no losses” from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill.

Click here for the wide-ranging interview.