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BP's chairman has so far kept way in the background, letting his chief executive become the target of America's ire with the company.

Today he spoke before the assembled media just outside the White House, and he may have wished he'd stayed out of the limelight.

The Swedish former boss of Eriksson, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said that although oil companies were seen as greedy, BP wasn't like that and cared about "the small people". He said it three times.

OK. English is not his first language and we all know what he meant. But it didn't sound great, and I wait to see what the small people make of it.

But what of the substance?

Well, $20bn sounds like an awful lot of money. It's what BP has agreed to put into an independent fund to pay the claims of Gulf residents affected by the spill. That's £13.5bn, about a quarter of the company's entire worth, £63bn, and considerably more than their profit last year of £8.75bn.

The president went out of his way to say this wasn't a cap, a limit, on what BP ends up paying, although I am sure they hope it is more than enough. But there seems to me to be a problem.

The man who will run the fund was also in charge of the pay-outs for victims of 9/11, so I am sure he knows how to estimate hugely difficult claims. And there must be a procedure, standards and rules that have been established over years.

But just how far does BP's liability extend?

Take Fred Simmons, who owns a company selling and renting properties, a hotel and an idyllic beach-front bar in Pensacola, Florida. I watched the president's Oval Office speech with him and he liked what he saw. But he's worried about the future.

After six grim years, bookings were up this year, the highest ever, and he was looking forward to a great season. But with the threat of the oil, which has not in fact reached the pristine Pensacola beaches, most people have cancelled. He has lost at least $125,000.

But there is a way forward. BP asked him to get people to put in writing that they cancelled because of the oil. He's done that and has high hopes of getting his money.

But what about next year? If there is still oil around people may not book in the first place, so how do you estimate the business lost? What if it goes on for years? Fred tells me of a great new restaurant that's opened on the beach and has virtually no customers. How much do they claim? Can and should BP underpin the economy of the Gulf Coast for years to come?

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