HOT ON THE HEELS of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and allegations of striking a deal to free a convicted mass murderer, BP has managed to execute yet another spectacular PR blunder.

Amidst global conern about the millions of gallons of oil pumping in to the Gulf of Mexico, BP established a “Response in Pictures” page on its website, to prove to the public just how hard it’s been working to solve the problem.

Unfortunately for BP, its marketing department is about as good at Photoshop as its engineers are at plugging underwater oil wells.

On closer inspection of the photographs purportedly featuring the hectic efforts in BP HQ to plug the leak, a US blog picked up on the tell-tale signs of an amateur graphics editor at work.

When confronted by the Washington Post, BP issued a statement, explaining that the photographer working for the company had “pasted three ROV screen images in the original photo over three screens that were not running video feeds at the time.”

The statement didn’t elaborate on the reasons why three screens in the crisis command centre – that were supposed to be monitoring the largest oils spill in US history – were blank.

BP has since replaced the altered photo with the original.