DESCRIPTION You will be expected to critically evaluate, in essay format, the ethical issues in a complex, current business problem. Ethics are based on moral decision-making and there is not always a...

BP Oil Spill
Corporate Responsibility and Governance
BP Oil Spill
Overview of the Situation
The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill which is also known as Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill happened in 2010. This is considered to be among the largest oil spill in the history. The explosion that took place in Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig was owned by Transocean and it was leased by Oil Company known as British Petroleum. It was on the night of 20th April 2010 a natural gas blasted through the concrete core installed by Halliburton, the contractor. The natural gas moved up the Deepwater rig’s riser platform and killed 11 workers and leaving few injured. On the morning of 22nd the rig capsized and sank through which the drilling mud was injected to counteract the upward pressure of the natural gas. After the spill happened the oil started to discharge into the gulf and it damaged the well and there was discharge of almost 60,000 barrels per day. The oil spill had therefore blown out the coast of Mexico for approximately 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast (Malik, 2010).
To prevent oil spill a Rig blowout preventer was BP but this device malfunctioned and could not prevent the spill. Later the forensic analysis reported that blind shear, gigantic blades were designed to slice through the pipe that carried oil malfunctioned as otherwise the pipe would bent under the pressure of the rising gas and oil. The studies revealed that the leak happened due to buoyant action of gas hydrates- the gas molecules in ice matrix, this was formed by the strong reaction of the cold water and natural gas. BP made several efforts to bring the situation under control as they put an apparatus the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) cap and was later removed to install permanent seal and it helped in slowing down of the leak but a lot of waste had happened by then.
Due to the leak may people lost lives and the economic prospects on the Gulf Coast became dire as several industries were affected. The water was closed for fishing due to fear of contamination and many people approx 8000-12000 were left temporarily unemployed and the tourism industry was also badly affected. Later, on the demands made by the Obama government $20 billion compensation fund was made for those who were affected by it and this fund was gradually paid out and it was largely depleted by 2013 (Rowell, 2016). The BP Company though did not take the onus of the accident and rather blamed it on the contractors.
Critical Evaluation
This is the critical evaluation of the British Petroleum oil company, is the world’s largest integrated energy companies. The oil spill case of 2010, the key principles of communication i.e. ethics and current business problems are discussed here in detail. The disaster that occurred in 2010 claimed several lives, many times crisis are inevitable and are followed by public outrage if they are not properly handled by the organizations. Therefore it is extremely important for an organization to work in the best of the public interest. The BP oil spill case of 2010 is one of the examples of modern world crisis, where it was found that the oil was officially leaking from the BP well but the company executives did not respond to the crisis appropriately.
The Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequence gas leak was caused due to lack of external and internal regulations. BP Oil spill case serves as a contemporary corporate crisis and the CEO of the Company Tony Hayward made some insensitive comments after the accident took place, one of the comments made by him stated that, “the environmental impact of the spill will be very modest” (Schoenberg, 2005). The company’s add indicated that the Company did not follow their own internal guidelines for damage control after the spill took place. In one of the press releases the company was found to put the blame of the accident on the Transocean. Sakashita, a U.S Environmental Protection Agency claimed that the organization didn’t know what chemicals were being discharged in the Gulf of Mexico (Rowell, 2016), the organization does not keep track of...