It’s a relief to see BP chief Tony Hayward put out of his misery. By all accounts, he was a fine executive in his three years at the helm of the British oil giant, streamlining its cumbersome management and trying to change a culture that put production ahead of safety.

But, seemingly uncomfortable in the freewheeling Gulf and ill at ease with Congress, he was the wrong person to build confidence and reassurance that BP would indeed set right the damage it had caused.

In the weeks since the April 20 explosion and fire, he had accumulated an impressive portfolio of public-relations blunders, perhaps most notably saying of the spill, “There is no one who wants this over more than I do. I want my life back.”

It was a jarringly insensitive remark, considering that 11 of his oil workers never would get their lives back.

Earlier, he had described the Gulf of Mexico as “a big ocean” and the amount of oil spilled – the largest spill in U.S. history – relatively small in relation.

And he was still at it even as the BP board announced his departure. The BP response to the spill “has been a model of good social corporate responsibility,” he pronounced. Perhaps so, but that’s not his judgment to make. It belongs to the residents of the Gulf and their communities.

Hayward thought he had been unfairly “demonized” and then, as if actively searching for Americans to irritate, said he might be “too busy” in his new job to attend any future U.S. hearings into the cause of the spill and its cleanup.

His new job, almost comically, is as a director of a BP joint venture in Siberia. It might not be all that pleasant.

The Russians forced his predecessor in that job, Robert Dudley, out of the country and refused to allow him back in.

Dudley, the current head of BP’s U.S. operations, is slated to be Hayward’s replacement as CEO, the first American to hold that job.

But Hayward is not expected to step down until Oct. 1, meaning that, for whatever satisfaction it’s worth, he will technically be presiding over the company when the blown-out Macondo well might be finally permanently capped.

Hayward’s executive parachute – severance, pension and stock – is estimated at $18 million. Contractually, he’s entitled to that money, but, like leaving in the middle of the spill to attend a luxury-yacht race in England, it’s not going to further endear him to the people of the Gulf.