Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Ethical issues in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Theory of accident causation dom
British Petroleum Oil Spill
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Ethical issues in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the largest offshore oil spills in U.S. history, BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010. This paper seeks to investigate closely the system and the reasons of failure, to answer the questions behind numerous studies on this accident, Is Deepwater Horizon explosion inevitable? and What can we do to avoid such accidents?
Within the scope of Perrow’s normal accident theory, this paper aims to draw conclusions to the above questions and set forth recommendations to be considered in other similar oil drilling systems.
Case background
On April 20, 2010, BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, claiming the lives of eleven people and injuring 17 others. The fire continued for 36 hours until the rig sank. Following the sinking, a sea-floor oil gusher flowed for 87 days, causing a spill of national significance (BP, 2010).
Numerous investigations explored the causes of the explosion and record-setting spill. Reports, including that from the U.S. government, pointed to defective cement on the well, faulting mostly BP, but also rig operator Transocean and contractor Halliburton (BP, 2010; Hogue, 2010). In 2011, a White House commission blamed BP and its partners for a series of cost-cutting decisions and an insufficient safety system, but also concluded that the spill resulted from “systemic” root causes and failure to create and apply in both industry practices and government policies (Broder, 2011).
Until now, BP is still struggling with the repercussions. Legal proceedings regarding this case are ongoing, with settlements and payments have cost BP more than 40 billion dollars (Fontevecchia, 2013).
Literature review
BP’s accident will be examined under Perrow (1984)’...
... middle of paper ...
...cy; thus accidents can be controlled better.
Conclusion
By evaluating BP’s attributes before the accident, the paper shows that the system controlling Deepwater Horizon was a normal accident. Many factors signal that the complexity and tight coupling found in BP’s system can be widespread in other systems, which heightened the probability to have an accident escalate at not only Deepwater Horizon but also in the future.
The paper recommends that in order to prevent such accident to happen, every party needs to get involved. Designers, developers, operators, and most importantly, regulators must know and understand the potential risks are real and how to conduct accordingly.
Conclusively, since accidents in oil drilling industry are most likely inevitable, there should be regulations to keep all parties together, together working on a failure-free operation goal.
At the end I come to conclusion that BP was not properly prepared for any disaster like that there risk assessment related to project is very limited and even not considered seriously about it for their own progress and putting live of public and employees in danger by not following the standard SOP of particular project. Even after incident happened they try to close their eyes on reality. The company should take this incident as alarm and should implement proper risk assessment for future and also compensate damages on ethical ground and if they counter this situation in good way their loss of bad reputation will be lesser as it predicted to be they should considered their responsibility towards society as well by doing this they not only making other people lives better but also earning good will to their company.
In my opinion, BP's response to the oil spill wasn't the best. Plus their spokesperson Tony Hayward's comments did little to help the situation. The response should have been about damage limitations. Hayward's responses made the company seem aloof and unconcerend about the environmental damage being done. When they gave an amout of barrels that were leaking into the ocean, they gave the wrong amount which hurted their credibility. They deflected the blame for the accident. BP would call the oil spill the "Gulf of Mexico oil spill" while the rest of the world called it the "BP oil spill." They might have took the blame but they said it wasn't their accident however they would take responsibility to clean it up even though it wasn't their fault. I think the fact that they used social media to show show updates and progress was a smart move since it is probably now the biggest media median. However, everything else was not the best way to handle this whole situation.
Weeks, Jennifer. "BP's Financial Pain From Spill Is Just Beginning." CQ Researcher 21.29 (2011): 688. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
Experts say the many deaths could have been prevented with better safety training and better safety precautions. Since then new and old rules have been enforced. During the late 1980's the federal and provincial governments installed boards to regulate offshore oil and gas. These boards required anyone visiting the rigs to have minimum safety...
...the action of drilling is going on because so that if the same incident ever happen again, their will be more men to take the first aid action in trying to stop the leak. Also maybe the company should change the type of pipe they are using to engage in transferring the drilled oil because it might be the material used to make the pipe that is weaken and ended up causing the oil company billions of dollars.
This is not the first time that BP is at fault. They have had criminal convictions in places such as Endicott Bay in Alaska, Texas City and Prudhoe Bay. Jeanne Pascal was a part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and was assigned to watch over BP. Pascal was watching over companies such as BP that were facing debarment. Under her watch, BP was charged with four federal crimes. Over the past twelve years, Pascal’s seen BP patterns as misconducts. She attempted to warn the government about BP’s safety and environmental issues that would most likely lead to another disaster. While she was watching over BP, the company misinformed and misled her about things that resulted to the felonies that they have committed. Sensing that some things were not right about the company, she presented a case of their unsafe working environments.
BP was founded in 1908 under the name Anglo-Persian Oil Company. They changed their name to British Petroleum in 1954 and merged with Amoco in 1998. (BP Public Website, 2010) “The Texas City Refinery is BP’s largest and most complex oil refinery... It was owned and operated by Amoco prior to the merger of BP and Amoco.” (Michael P. Broadribb, 2006) Throughout their history, there have been a number of accidents that have been caused by negligence and disregard of safety precautions. Unfortunately many lives have been cut short or seriously injured as a result. My research will focus on the 2005 Texas City Oil Refinery Explosion. I will attempt to look into the ethical implications that surrounded this disaster before and after the event and suggest what BP could have done to prevent the incident then and in the future.
Most people believe that one man-made natural disaster would teach us to be better, but we have learned that history repeats itself. The Exxon Valdez oil spill (in 1989) and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or BP oil spill, (in 2010) were both devastating oil spills that shocked the nation. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred due to a tanker grounding. The BP oil spill was caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. These two oil spills were both disasters and had greater effects in certain categories. In this essay, I will be comparing the cause of both oil spills, the damage/effect of both oil spills, and the cleanup of each oil spill.
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, located in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 17. The oil rig sank a day and a half later. The spill was referred to as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP oil spill, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and BP oil disaster. It was first said that little oil had actually leaked into the ocean, but a little over a month later the estimate was 12,000-19,000 barrels of crude oil being leaked per day. Many attempts were made to stop the leak but all failed until they capped the leak on July 15, 2010, and on September 19 the federal government declared the well “effectively dead.”
On the summer of 2010, the petroleum industry was shaken by one of the largest disasters in history known as the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. This resulted in the killing of eleven people, injuring of seventeen and an immeasurable damage to the ocean and the surrounding communities. BP had to immediately respond to the crisis and handle their financial and reputational risks.
On a Monday afternoon, A couple of friends and I drove about forty-five minutes to El Dorado to see a movie. A movie in which we didn’t know anything about. None of us had even seen the trailer. I sent my friend a link to the movies that were showing at the cinema in El Dorado, and she had chosen Deepwater Horizon solely on the fact she liked the actors that had been cast for the movie. A few of these actors included Mark Wahlberg and Kate Hudson. Deepwater Horizon, as I came to find out on the car ride there, is about the most devastating oil spill in United States history. Since this event occurred only roughly six years ago, I recognized it after my friend called it the BP oil spill. Growing up in south Arkansas, I know many people that work on oil rigs so the spill was something that came close to home. The movie portrays the events leading up to the rig explosion and the aftermath concerning the people aboard the rig.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill accident of April 20th 2010 that caused a gas release followed by the explosion that took place causing hydro carbons to leak into the Gulf of Mexico posed a lot of strategic implications in the competence, capabilities, internal resources and Corporate Social Responsibility of BP. The implications of the Oil Spill underscores the Icarus paradox, which holds that the very capabilities that give an organization its source of competitive advantage can become constraining with changes to the external context. Teece (2009) emphasised that dynamic capabilities revolve around three generic types namely: Sensing (ability to scan, search and explore the external
Although workplace accidents are very common, the majority of them can be prevented. As a company, you are obliged by the law to protect your employees, so it is important to take the necessary actions that will minimize the risk of accidents (Intelligent HQ, 2015).
I have discussed major safety topics including road and work safety and their effect in our daily living. We can’t evade from danger. The importance is that we learn to control and avoid factors that can cause us harm, injury or loss. This starts by making smart decisions. We should continue to teach our children to detect unsafe situations, places, things, and elements at an early age so that they practice safety habits throughout their life. In conclusion, is better to be safe than sorry.
Accidents is defined as an unplanned and undesired circumstances resulting in injuries, fatalities and loss or damage of property or assets(safety.ILO, 2011). Accidents are much deeper and beyond the older clichés, accounting to bad luck or fate, almighty’s work or simply being at wrong place at wrong time. But, in todays scientific world it is neither perceived as fate nor as deity’s work but a social problem resulting from a chain of undesired events. Preventing accidents is very arduous task without knowledge of accident phenomenon and the study in the field of accident phenomenon has been very diverse but a basic question has always been raised as why does accident occur? Can there be some common pattern to it? To unravel these mysteries and predict and prevent accidents several theories and model has been postulated in the past and recent times with each having some explanatory and predictive values.