In an off side meeting from the G20 Summit in Toronto this past weekend, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama met to discuss BP and the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. Both leaders agreed that BP must remain a vital company. BP’s financial sheet has taken a hit from setting up the $20 billion escrow account in the US and the mounting costs of containment and clean up of the spill. Also, stock shares have lost over £66 billion since the oil spill in April began.

BP stocks dropped to a 14 year low of last week. Investors are not only keeping an eye on clean up efforts and mounting costs of containment attempts but also the public relations catastrophes that seem to occur weekly surrounding BP. Americans, rightly emotional and angered, have only escalated in emotions with misdirected comments by BP authorities, including Tony Hayward, who stated that he wanted things to get settled so he could "have his life back". Citizens directly affected by the crisis know they will never get their lives back and saw his comment as insensitive. Later on Hayward handed over day to day operations only to be seen afterwards on his private yacht participating in the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race.

One environmentalist described it as "yet another public relations disaster." Social networking sites were buzzing with outrage that any official would deem a Holiday necessary in the middle of not only the oil spill crisis but the financial crisis of the company. President Obama has been openly critical of BP’s response in clean up and their lack of success in containment. Cameron had hoped to discuss the need to keep investors optimistic in BP’s future and the reality of allowing BP to remain strong enough to afford the mounting costs of the crisis.

The end of last week saw a tropical storm threatening the area of the BP well. Luckily the storm, which is now a hurricane, shifted direction and no longer is a threat. Had the storm hit the area, containment and clean up could have been dramatically compromised. The storm will produce some waves and winds that will bother the clean up efforts but equipment will not have to move out of the area. Moving equipment would have caused a two week delay before containment could have been continued. Investors must have had a sigh of relief when the storm shifted. BP did not need another problem.

With a crisis that has already cost £66 billion in stock losses, $20 billion in escrow set aside for claims in the US, mounting costs for clean up and containment, and a well dumping millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico every day, a PR problem in not what BP needs. The comments from the President seems to have softened and Cameron may have been successful in convincing Obama to lighten his statements against BP. While anger at the company is expected, the PR shift needs to be one of the company striving to make things right not continuing to do things wrong. Obama may be the best person to point out the efforts BP is trying to make and BP needs less of his pointing out what has yet to be done. Controlling BP’s own officer’s blunders when it comes to the public view of BP will need to be addressed next. Should all of that occur then maybe investors will respond with some confidence and the value of the company will see some movement toward an increase. A much needed result for the crisis has not ended and it needs the company that caused it to be there to try and make things right.