British Petroleum Legal Practices And Ethical Responsibilities Within Its Corporation

On April 20, 2010 off the Gulf of Mexico, there was a blowout of the Macondo well which is owned by British Petroleum also known as BP. When the blowout took place it got immediate media attention because aspects of the event were known over the world. Within events transpiring it was discovered how limited the resources and reaction to the disaster was going to be. This paper will detail aspects of the event from symptoms of the problem, the root cause, important unresolved issues, roles of the organization’s key players and stakeholders, and explain the focus of specific ethical systems. Also discussed in this paper are relevant strategies and alternatives, the effect of globalization

Ethics is defined as moral principles that administer a person’s behaviour. It is the basic perception and essential principle of decent human conduct. Issues concerning unethical approach are known as ethical issues.

Originally, the company was charged 1.3 million dollars for causing this spill. This means that the company had paid most of their profit into cleaning up oil from a pond. But at the same time most of the people around them had experienced things that they have not experienced before, also since this had occurred the company had gotten a lot of hate and bad reviews because of this oil spill so many of the people working there are known as a bad company. Plains Midstream company may have also experienced a lot of financial problems because they had to pay a lot to clean all of this up. This company also must have lost a lot of there money because now they cannot invest a lot of money into this specific area since this spill had occurred. Also this company had caused a lot of other types of spills in Canada and one of the biggest one is Little Buffalo oil spill. This company is already down a lot of there money because they had to repair a lot of different pipes in a lot of different areas, so there in a lot of

This paper includes information regarding the BP Oil spill. References are listed at the bottom.

²The drill that was used to drill the well in the first place is an example of trading across continents.⁶ The drilling contractor that BP used to sort after a new oil rig, Transocean are a Swiss based company and instead of sourcing its production in either the UK, Switzerland or the US – where most of its shareholders reside, or in the UK where the company – British Petroleum – is named after; Transocean chose Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard, based in Ulsan; South Korea, as the company to build the oil rig which is valued at $560,000,000 - a contract which will have supported the steel industry in South Korea greatly. This shows the whole world were cooperating and working with each other to extract the oil from the

As this case shows Human Rights violation BP, The company was lacking operational decisions, such as ensuring that safety standards are appropriate for employees; rather than pursuing additional profits and hiding behind a mask of public relations. Viewed from this perspective, ‘calculated casualties’ don’t provide the greatest amount of good; it simply highlights an unethical and ruthless pursuit of profits and hence environmental destruction and human deaths would widely be considered unethical.

British Petroleum, BP, began as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in the beginning of the 1900’s. The founder, William D’Arcy, risked his entire fortune at the hopes that oil would be discovered in Persia. He was success on May 28, 1908. The business struggled in the early years, but ultimately found success. BP has become a global leader in the energy business. Beginning in 2000 and in the years to follow BP has focused not only on oil, but also on oil alternatives such as; solar, wind, natural gas, and biofuels (British Petroleum, 2015).

Simply put, BP pretended like there wasn’t a problem in the way they were handling things, and when they came under fire they would lie about it or put the blame on someone else. What they did was they tried to control the message the public was giving them via a method known as ‘corporate greenwashing’, which is a way of giving off the perception that a company’s business model is environmentally friendly, so it can be thought of as putting more money towards advertising how green a company is instead of using it to pursue such practices that would make it so. BP gambled on this and ultimately lost when the Oil Spill occurred; rather than actively doing something about it, they blamed subordinates and contractors to try and take pressure off of themselves while simultaneously showing minimal regard to the impact that their mistake had on the environment. They only made the problem of them getting a bad reputation even worse when they weren’t listening to the public and ultimately paid the price, losing $80 billion and an additional $1.3 billion on criminal

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill occurred on April 20, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. This oil spill was the largest spill in history in front of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. This oil spill released about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. This spill not only wreck havoc on the marine life but also the economic players that depended on ocean such as fisherman, tourism, and offshore drilling located along the gulf coast. Along will the spill the oil rig which was named Deepwater Horizon also went up in flames. This proved that the issue went far beyond just an oil rig that blew a line. Since this oil spill had drastic impacts all along the coast, BP which was the most liable for this incident faced criminal charges based on what happened. BP which knew the risks of deep ocean drilling failed to take the necessary safety procedures to reduce the risks of such incident occurring, thus was the reasoning behind placing most of the fault on them and not the other companies. The lack of regulatory oversight led to the issues and cost-cutting procedures opened the rig up to possible malfunctions like the one that occurred. During the spill into the gulf, BP sealed the well with cement which seemed to stop a majority of the oil from escaping the well. BP also recognized that the well was “dead” which was proven wrong when scientists still could conclude was leaking minor amounts of oil into the ocean. This spill not only proved to be harmful to the environment but also

A wealthy British gentleman by the name of William D’Arcy is the founder of the world famous gas station BP. D’Arcy had a thrill over oil and decided to invest all of his savings in the quest for oil in the Middle East. Experts and scientists helped encourage D’Arcy to pursue the venture. But years started to pass and funds starting to run low, William was starting to feel as if this was the wrong investment. Throughout the years BP has gone through a plethora of ups and downs. From bankruptcy, to not being able to transport oil to desired location, and also having more oil than they could sell and not having a demand for it. Also BP has had disasters related to social responsibility, and before the major oil spill in 2010,

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the BP oil spill refers to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed for three months in 2010. The spill was a result of the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. The explosion killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others (Summarized from Wikipedia article on: “Deepwater Horizon oil spill” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill )

These social responsibilities and many other ethical issues were realized by many people when on April 20, 2010 British Petroleum had a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Also, known as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the BP Oil Disaster, the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, or the Macondo Blowout. BP was mostly at fault, but Transocean, the rig operator, and Halliburton, the contractor,

There are very few aspects of how a company behaves as a corporate citizen that do not apply to a company of the size and nature of BP. The most significant of these are the sheer environmental impact - not simply of the extraction of oil and the energy use of BP's own operation, but more significantly of the impact on climate change of the actual use of all the oil by BP's customers. The state of current scientific evidence raises serious question marks over whether or not human society can actually afford to burn all the hydrocarbons whose existence we have already identified - never mind potential future discoveries. Twenty years ago, people worried that one day the oil would run out. Now, it is the case that the real issue has been identified as one of emissions.

The image as well as the operational business reputation of a corporation is critical to the survivability of the corporation in today’s business world. This reputation is even more critical when a business has is known globally with holdings and operations around the world. Such is the case with British Petroleum (BP) as it actively explores for oil in 26 countries around the world. BP is renowned as an industry leader in oil production and the refinement of oil related products such as gasoline, kerosene and motor oil products. In 1999, BP acquired American Oil Company, also

The focus of this report will be to perform an audit of Beyond Petroleum’s ethical practices. This report will identify three main breaches of ethics, explain why they are unethical and make recommendations of what could be done to rectify the issues identified.