WASHINGTON, July 27, 2010 (AFP) – BP's new chief executive, Bob Dudley, vowed Tuesday to "change the culture" of how the company tackles safety issues in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Dudley, until now in charge of BP's Gulf clean-up operations, will become the group's first American CEO following the resignation Tuesday of the embattled Tony Hayward.

"Sometimes events like this shake you to the core, the foundation, and you have two responses," Dudley said in an TV interview with ABC News.

"One is to run away and hide, the other is to respond and really change the culture of the company and make sure all the checks and balances are there, just to make sure this does not happen again," said Dudley.

Dudley said his top priority was to permanently seal the Gulf well, contain the crude spill and clean up and restore the area's beaches.

"What's first on my agenda is to make sure we do seal that well, that the effort contains the spill. We clean up the beaches. We restore the Gulf. And we'll be doing that for a long time and that is my number one focus, particularly over the next month and a half," he said.

In a later interview with CNBC television, Dudley said tremendous changes have already taken place in the British energy giant over recent years, as he denied the company had been negligent.

"Now it's very clear. We have to accelerate those changes and do a complete analysis of this investigation and look and see what we need to change in terms of structure and culture. We will do that."

He insisted BP had a strong safety record, and had not been cutting corners. "What I do know is we got to understand this very complicated accident," he said.

As BP continues its own investigation into the Gulf spill, Dudley said one focus would be on how its equipment is maintained, "much of it not managed by BP."

And he maintained there had been "decisions by individuals who maybe didn't see warning signs as it unfolded. We will make sure that doesn't happen to anyone ever again."

US Congressman Bart Stupak, one of the leading congressional investigators into the Gulf spill, said he worried that Dudley was not a true reformer, and that BP board members were "playing a high stakes game of musical chairs and simply rotating top leadership into different high-level posts."

Dudley "must quickly prove that BP is serious about running safe operations whether in the Gulf Coast, on the North Slope or anywhere else in the United States," Stupak said in a statement.

But Dudley hit back that he was best placed to oversee the necessary changes at BP, because he knew the company and employees well.

"This was a difficult accident for people in BP. They were proud and contributed to the energy and the industry," he said.

BP wanted to get back on its "feet and rebuild the reputation. Someone from outside might have a more difficult time doing it."