On April 20, 2010, the event of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused 11 employees’ death, and around 35000 to 60000 barrels of oil were pouring into the ocean every day. Facts have been proven that any crisis must go along with the lack of risk management. Offshore oil drilling work is a high-risk occupation which requires strict obedience to the risk control management without any carelessness. In response to the disaster, identifying and assessing the potential risks and analyzing potential impacts are the priorities for the company to develop appropriate oil spill responses and perfect crisis management plans.
There is a variety of risks along with an oil spill disaster. The human right rules the company take responsibility to protect employees away from dangerous situations. Employees’ safety should be put in the first consideration of the risk assessment. Incident could cause significant injuries and even kill people. Ensuring safety facilities in good order will help staff avoid suffering from life-threatening. Potential risks also exist in technical dr...
Ethical issues in this case are the impact on tourism industry of Gulf of Mexico and its beaches, unemployment around area because of closure of business, wildlife and the environment destruction and concerned with human health and post incident trauma. It has been almost year but world is still recovering from the devastation of disastrous oil spill. It destroyed the environment and wildlife all over the place and its total impact is still unknown. Environmental impacts may be noticeable for years to come.
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.
One major business incident happened in April 2010 shocked the world and caused an “earthquake” of British Petroleum (BP)’s brand image. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig owned by BP in the Golf of Mexico exploded, leading to a disastrous oil spill in this marine area. The maritime disaster caused by the explosion became the largest one in the history of the U.S. and brought huge financial and reputations losses to BP. What is worse, sealing the oil well took over five months. From the explosion of the completion of the sealing (announced by BP), over 780 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the sea, causing irreversible pollution and damage to the bio-system in this area and the world (Lofgren 2013). BP’s response, however, is considered as a crisis communication failure (Heller 2012) by some people and others believe BP’s response was effective (Mejri & de Wolf 2013).
The Deepwater Horizon was a dynamically positioned drilling rig which owned by Transocean and it was chartered to BP from 2008. On April 20, 2010, the offshore oil rig exploded, the explosion was the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry as the oil leaked 205.8 million gallons of crude oil into Mexico Gulf Coast and BP spent 86 days to cap the well, stopping the oil flow into Mexico Gulf for the first time. This report covered some facts about the BP oil spill scandal and its influence to stakeholders. The article also includes the analysis of oil spill from accounting, legal, ethical and corporate governance aspects. Furthermore, a comparison between The BP oil spill and Enron scandal is for analyze the similarities and differences of these two cases, and explore any improvement and change on legislation, accounting standards, code of conduct etc. The purpose of this report is reveal to directors what did BP do wrong in the past and what aspect the firm could do better in the future.
The Ocean Ranger The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform that sank in Canadian waters 315 kilometres southeast from St. John's Newfoundland, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland on February 15, 1982, with 84 crewmembers onboard. The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi-submersible, offshore exploration, oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland, and in November 1980 moved to the Grand Banks. Since it was so big, it was considered to have the ability to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs.
British Petroleum (“BP”) is the company that is being blamed for the incident. Employing 80,000 people, BP is an international oil company that puts different technology to use for finding oil and gas under the Earth’s surface. One of the oilrigs, Deepwater Horizon has drilled 35,000 ft. making it to be the deepest drilling of oil and gas (Walsh). Deepwater Horizon was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico about 52 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip. After the explosion, helicopters searched for 11 crewmembers that reported missing. 17 people were injured (BP Internal Investigation Team). A day later, the rig was found upside down (BP Oil Spill Timeline). The cost to clean up the damage is approximately $760 million (Walsh).
The BP oil spill began on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. On April 20, 2010, 126 workers on the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon were in the process of temporarily closing the exploratory Macondo oil well. That evening, an explosion abroad the drilling unit set off a chain of events that eventually led to the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven crewmembers lost their lives and others were seriously injured, as fire engulfed and ultimately destroyed the rig.
In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement was replaced by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement. This new organization along with OSHA changed the way the offshore drilling is conducted. Today there are several regulations in place that were not in place at the time of the oil spill. Before the
On April 20, 2010, the Gulf of Mexico experienced a disaster unprecedented in scale and environmental impact. Fifty miles off the coast of Louisiana in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a BP drilling rig suffered an explosion that claimed eleven lives and caused the rig to sink over 5000 ft. to the sea bed floor. This was the beginning of the BP oil spill which spanned over eighty seven days, releasing an approximate 2.3 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Although the flow of oil into the Gulf was contained July 15, 2010, the lasting effects of the oil spill on the environment continue to be devastating and widespread. (Kirkwood 1)
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, BP 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Sean Edward Paquette, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – Hartford, Connecticut and Professor Ernesto Gutierrez-Miravete, Ph.D
Due to a failure of the vessel’s blowout preventer as the only guard against an explosion, the rig owned by Transocean imploded under numerous problems of maintenance. As dead batteries were investigated to be present inside the blowout preventer alongside defective wiring , BP was not the only company concerned with potential profit loss from acceptable safety standards. In order to maximize revenue generated by the Deepwater Horizon rig, Transocean officials failed to recall the vessel for maintenance inspection throughout its active nine-years. With BP officials discovering more than three hundred ninety maintenance issues within the Deepwater Horizon rig, the estimated time for such errors to be corrected came out to be approximately three
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.” In the three months that it took to finally put a stop the leak, 4.9 million barrels of oil were released into the ocean. The spill caused considerable damage to marine and wildlife habitats and the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries. The White House energy advisor, Carol Browner, goes as far to say that the Deepwater oil spill is the “worst environmental disaster the US has faced.”
Business risk management has been a widely crucial tool for firms to include in their operations and its importance cannot be overlooked. In the case of British Petroleum (BP) Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in 2010, there was negligence and lack in the contingency plan and response of the company to the risks that arose. It became evident in this analysis that BP’s manner of handling the incident had a massive financial implication that ensued negative public perception and company reputation and value.
BP oil spill caused tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day to be dumped into the Gulf of Mexico (Schrope, 2010). The BP oil spill was one of the worst disasters that have taken place. It took BP three months to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. The BP oil spill was a disaster that was being watched by many people in the world and everyone expected BP to provide detail information about the fix and a resolution to why the blowout happened. The community wanted to know what actions BP plan to put in place to make sure this problem do not happen again. The public wanted to know about the impact the spill was having on the organisms, fishes, and other animals living in the gulf (Schrope, 2010). The public expected briefings on the cleanup efforts that plan BP was putting into place when the oil reached the shores. BP did not utilize information technology to the extent that it was available because took too long to cap off the flow of the oil.
From a personal perspective, two costs that BP might incur from the oil spill in the Gulf Coast region would be as follows: First, additional funding for research to universities for marine & wildlife in the region and the impact on the environment. The incident has had a major impact on the Gulf region and beyond. “According to the website dosomething.com “16,000 total miles of coastline have been affected, including the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida”.