The Ethics Of BP Oil Spill: A Critical Evaluation

The Impact of the BP Oil Spill on the Environment

The incident of oil spill in Gulf of Mexico occurred on 20^th April, 2010 when an explosion occurred in the Deep Water Horizon oil rig. Near about 11 people died in this incident and the rig also slinked which results in a huge amount of oil spill. Survey to the incident says more than 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. The incident not only impacted to huge amount of loss to the British Petroleum but also affected the shorelines along the cost of Mexico between Florida and Louisiana. The incident of oil spill has resultant into contamination of water and death to thousand of aquatic habitats. The Federal Joint Task Force who were assigned with the task to investigate into the reason behind the oil spill. The report states that the responsibility of the damage was shared by the British Petroleum, Transocean and Halliburton but British Petroleum is ultimately responsible for the incident (Arora & Lodhia,2017).

The explosion of the rig resulted into various problems which have been identified by the non-governmental and governmental organization during their investigation into the incident that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton, which is one of the multinational corporations dealing in oil field services, recommended not installing oil rig in the Gulf Of Mexico but the majority shares of the project were held by the British Petroleum which decided to install the platform on Gulf of Mexico for oil exploration. Many parties were affected in the incident directly or indirectly. Tourism and fisheries were mainly affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf was a major tourist destination and so the tourism and the persons involved with tourism has been mostly affected. The tourist and other peoples were prohibited from going to the affected place, no water sports or fun attraction of the beaches of the Gulf was stopped which resultant into loss in the tourism sector (Kessler et al., 2017).

The oil spill has also affected the profit percentage of the organization involved in the oil exploration. The profit percentage of the company falls to 35 percent with the increase in the expenditure, payment of compensation and penalties for the company. This has resultant in damage and loss to the reputation and finances of the British petroleum. The investors and the customers of the British Petroleum started moving back and finding other alternatives for their investment (Susskind et al., 2016).

The stakeholder has impacted by the oil spill in the Deepwater Horizon including the workmen involved in the process. The stakeholders are not only the owners of the company but also are those who are involved in the day to day actions of the company. The company carries on its activities only for the stakeholders. The kind of stakeholders those have been affected by the oil spill are the workers, tourists, tourist driven business, tourist communities, fisherman, environment, oil industry, media, government, environmental activists and many more (Matejek & Gössling, 2014).

Environment is the stakeholder which has been affected significantly due to the incident. The sea organisms and the ecosystem have been affected due to the incident. The oil spill has contaminated the water and harms the whole ecosystem. In the assessment made by the Natural Resources Damage Assessment the BP Oil Spill has impacted almost 1100 miles of the coastal area and around 32 National Wildlife Refuges are at risk. To reduce the amount of oil spill BP has used several techniques like burning, skimming and use of chemical dispersants to decrease the volume of oil but this technique has long term implications on the ecosystem present in the ocean (Michel et al., 2013).

Stakeholders Affected by the BP Oil Spill

The oil spill also has impacted economically to the stakeholders. From fisherman to tourism has totally hampered the economic growth. The oil spill has affected the fisherman the business man dependant on the fishery, the livelihood of this people is in a very bad situation. The economic situation of the businessman in the area is relatively poor. The government is also facing an economic loss due to the incident. The potential investors are moving out to other sectors to invest leaving the oil sector drop its investment. The rise in the petroleum prices has affected the gasoline customers. The other oil producing companies in the oil sector has also been affected as several limitation are imposed on the companies drilling oil in areas, reduction in the demand for oil and requiring additional extraction of oil from places where oil extraction are costly and difficult (Dubansky et al., 2017).

The main argument in the essay is to look into the ethics and social responsibility of the British Petroleum in the incident. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 makes the companies and the person involved with the oil spillage responsible and shall have to pay compensation to the extent of the damages or losses suffered by the people and the environment. The companies associated with the British petroleum in the extraction of oil from the Gulf of Mexico are liable to pay damages to the government for the loss in tax revenues that the government has suffered. The companies are also liable for the destruction of natural resources and shall have to pay for the liability to the government. There have been numerous cases filed against BP for the oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico. The fisherman, tourist operators, hotel owners have filed for different amount of damages due to the oil spill (Allen & D’Elia, 2015).

BP being a highly reputed corporate firm dealing in oil extraction has a corporate social responsibility. The company should ensure that it complies with the law and ethical standards. As per the International Tanker Proprietors Pollution Federation Limited (ITOPF), there is no straightforward answer with regards to the cost of oil slicks since it fluctuates starting with one occurrence then onto the next and relies upon the number of interrelated factors, for example, the sort of oil, the area of the spill, and the characteristics of the exasperates zone, and additionally the nature of the alternate course of action and genuine reaction of administration. BP gauges the aggregate bill for the catastrophe, including tidy up and fines will add up to $42.4 billion. However the inquiry that remaining parts is whether the legislature and lawful framework are appropriately considering huge partnerships responsible when under three years after causing a natural and financial fiasco they keep on earning billions in benefit. Extensive organizations, for example, BP, can without much of a stretch discount the unsalvageable ecological damage as a cost of working together (Yin, Feng & Wang, 2015).

Discussing BP’s shortcomings, the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe is obvious that BP has extremely poor working benchmarks and methodology which drove the organization to acquire huge money related expenses and above all had a massive negative open recognition. The negative open recognition has turned out to be one of BP’s most famous shortcomings. Moreover, BP is attempting to realize an outlook change in its security culture. Accordingly, it is not far that BP may wind up into a comparable emergency circumstance as what occurred after the Texas and Gulf-of-Mexico fiascos because of careless hazard taking, cost cutting, overhead diminishment. Another key shortcoming in BP is seen where in spite of gigantic benefits, there is an ostensible interest in R&D, when contrasted with the interests in the upstream business. The low interest in R&D is has a chain response in realizing another shortcoming in BP where there is scarcely any move to expand generation of option sources, to take care of the expanding vitality demand by elective vitality (Diers?Lawson & Pang, 2016).

The Ethics of BP’s Corporate Social Responsibility

Therefore, it can be concluded that, Security can’t be the exchange off for cost and profit maximization. It is apparent that BP’s manageability report has a proceeding gap with the GRI rules. BP should be stricter towards recording execution parameters to coordinate the GRI rules. By building up water re-cycling strategies, reduction of waste by re-cycling and designing in extraction, BP should expand their interest in mechanical advancements and eco-preservation. BP should build interest in bio fuels and inexhaustible types of vitality as opposed to putting resources into non-renewable. This will decide BP’s upper hand in taking care of future vitality requests by renewable along these lines recovering its green picture by outflow decrease, oil slick diminishment and less risk to the nature and condition (Cherry et al., 2015).

Approaches and charges related with sustainable power source creation in specific areas, obliges the development of renewable. BP should work with neighborhood governments and arrangement creators to make major approaches and decrease in cost of renewable to help its development in many markets. The basic strategies should consolidate “carbon-evaluating approach” and ought to be executed worldwide through carbon assessment and carbon exchange. This can just prompt sharp lessening of GHG and carbon outflow in a most financially savvy path by make the polluter pay (Torralba et al., 2015).

Reference:

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