The bad news mounts for BP as the petrol giant has admitted that efforts to plug its Deepwater Horizon well and prevent any more crude oil escaping continue to fail.

One mile from the surface, and 50 miles from some of the most beautiful and valuable coastline on Earth, the leak continues unabated. And you can forget the estimates of how many gallons of oil are being pumped into the Gulf of Mexico each day, because BP has also conceded it has no clue exactly how much oil is leaking out.

These uncertainties add to the growing list of major imponderables facing the beleaguered British oil company. BP has said it does not know when the leak will be stopped, nor does it have any idea what the long-term ramifications for local communities and industries will be. It has also said it has no clue what the final cleanup bill will come to – except that it will be in the billions and that BP will be liable for every penny. Indeed, the implications are so inestimably huge at this stage that the only accurate bellwether of the kind of trouble BP now finds itself in has been the ashen, horrified look on chief executive Tony Hayward’s face. All the media training in the world cannot disguise the enormity of the problem now facing Hayward and his company.

Any oil company finding itself in this situation would be in trouble. But there is, of course, a very specific reason why BP, of all companies, is going to suffer more spectacularly than any other from this disaster. BP, as we now all know, now stands for “Beyond Petroleum”. In the most famous repositioning case of the century, Ogilvy and Landor helped BP to change its logo, its name and its positioning to reflect the fact that the company was now actively “exploring new ways to live without oil”.