Continuing Public Relations Problems for BP Essay

In my opinion there were four key causes in this disaster which were, lack of communication between BP and Transocean, multiple operations were under way simultaneous, several irregularities were already known and were failed to be looked into, and BP choose a less costly well, which came with higher risk. Helms (2015) reports that BP is worth 120.8 billion dollars

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

On April 20, 2010, the petroleum industry suffered the largest maritime disaster oil spill in its history known as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that had been working on a well for BP in the Gulf exploded and went up in flames. Subsequently, massive amounts of oil spilled out into the water, threatening the marine life and those living on the shore. The fire burned for 36 hours before the rig sank into the ocean, leaking dangerous chemicals into the water. Hydrocarbons and oil continued to leak into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days before they managed to seal the well. “The Gulf spill, which left 11 workers dead and 17 injured, is about the size of Rhode Island, running across the northern Gulf of Mexico between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Florida. It runs wide, threatening the coastlines, and deep, traveling beneath about 5,000 feet of water and 13,000 feet under the seabed,” (Emami, 2010). BP faced an angry uproar from the media, consumers, and environmentalists all over the world. The economy and the environment suffered greatly because of this incident. As investigations began, speculations quickly arose about the morals and capability of the company. The one positive image of BP had been shattered. Customers lost faith in the company and criticized the actions of its executives. Tony

“The production manager should control the manufacturing processes so as to eliminate any defective items, identify any weakness that become apparent during production.”(Manuel 2006). BP failed to follow safety regulations as a matter of fact. Right after the spill happened, BP’s diplomat has claimed that there was no one to blame, even the people who worked in the pipe line, their jobs were normally done. If you look for mistakes, you will find some. It was just a freak accident that was not expected from the situation. However, as the investigation went further, more and more evidence has been shown that it was not an accident but negligence. They didn’t do proper testing, for example, BP halted tests on the well lining five days before the explosion and kept oilfield testing firm Schlumberger on standby, according to NOLA. It had no plans to conduct a cement bond log test, which uses Sonics to identify weaknesses in the cement, known as a gold standard test. Also, Oil rig worker Mike Mason told Huffington Post he observed cheating on blowout preventer tests at least 100 times, including on wells owned by BP. In many cases, Mason says, BP employees were present while subcontractors faked the tests. Obviously, the systems failed and failed badly. BP violated the duty of exercising adequate quality controls over high-tech materials which caused the leaking happened. In addition, BP continually disregards safety and morality for profits. They are

However, Bp has demonstrated a disturbing measure of corrupt behavior, including government wrongdoings. Legitimate issues began the first time in 1998, when a temporary worker was gotten wrongfully dumping several gallons of dangerous waste into lustgraten well. An investigation of state records shows that the company is the most exceedingly awful in the business as far as oil slicks and put people in harm. It was also revealed that many of the rig workers had made reported about issues on the oil rig and were ignored by Bp and that shows how the company was reported by the issues by whistle blowers and they were ignored by the company. I believe that in any team project the company should have the obligation to stop any further issues and provide the safety of the workers if there was reported an issue. It was known that the Blowout Preventer was one of the main reasons that the spill was as big as it was. According to a company Transocean which tested the Blowout preventer many times, but it was suggested that it was defective but Bp ignored the failure of the Blowout prevented. I think it was the company’s fault the part was not fixed and taken proper response to it but it wasn’t and that what caused the uncontrollable spill and for the engineers it was there obligation to take a stand against the company because it’s their ethical obligation to their coworker

BP tends to make bets that others don’t which is most likely why the disastrous deep water horizon oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico five years ago. The fire burned for 36 hours while hydrocarbons leaked into the gulf before the well was sealed, unfortunately eleven individuals died. It has been difficult for BP to be the best company right now since this falling and they have been in reparation mode since this catastrophe. However, BP is now incorporating high safety and showed everyone that they are very reliable on the recovery of this hardship of BP trying to mix oil with water. BP came together to control the situation, cleanup, and diminish as much contamination as possible into the gulf. In addition, they are devoted long term to improve the Gulf of Mexico’s bionetwork and promise to be more careful so this will not happen again.

BP has had a long history of ethical and legal violations because BP chose to put profits above all else. In the past twenty years, BP subsidiaries were convicted of environmental crimes in Texas and Alaska. In addition, BP received the biggest fine in US history regarding safety violations. Although BP accepted responsibility, their record showed questionable and illegal behavior for twenty years. One of BP's major issues happened in a Texas refinery close to Galveston in 2005 (Jennings, 2009). This explosion took the lives of fifteen workers and injured five hundred people and caused residents nearby to become sheltered in their homes (Jennings, 2009). The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation board concluded that BP had

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.

In its Annual General Meeting in 2011, BP faced protests against BP’s executive’s remunerations and voiced their injustice (Webb & McVeigh, 2011). Facebook pages such as “Boycott BP” and RIP Spongebob, who died in an oil spill cause of BP” have been set up by activists, and have garnered 847,730 and 468,157 likes respectively (Jarvis, 2010). Hence, the impacts on these stakeholders have varying degrees, but are nonetheless affected one way or another by BP’s mistake.

Part 1 - Ethical Dilemmas- The accident elicited many feelings anger, disillusionment, disgust, and even employees feeling like they were let down because BP had not backed up its values promised to

Some internal weaknesses are also existed which could influence the company. For the oil and gas company, the main problems refer to pollution and safety. BP has involved in the largest environment problem which is caused by the spill

On April 20, the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico led to the largest accidental release of oil into marine waters in history. As a result, a huge loss of money and life was caused and affected serious environmental damage to wild animals and water pollution. BP was accused of their irresponsibility that it took 87 days before the well was closed and sealed. BP’s shares

Deepwater Horizon oil Spill: BP’s drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico had an explosion in April 2010, causing the “largest oil spill catastrophe in the petroleum industry history”. It caused the death of 11 men and injury to several others. “More than 150,000 barrels of crude oil gushed into the sea, every day, for almost 5 months and up to 68,000 square miles of the Gulf 's surface were covered” (1).

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 resulted in considerable damage to the environment, economy and human livelihoods. While BP, as one of the parties involved in the operation of the oil drilling on Deepwater Horizon rig, suffered huge financial loss and reputation loss, it was found to be the one to be mostly blamed due to its lack of risk management. As poor risk management can lead to an astonishing disaster like this, it appears to be necessary for every business to learn from BP’s mistakes and try the best to prevent such disaster from happening again. This report studies this case, focusing on two issues identified in BP’s risk management practices, namely its sloppy preparation for risks and its inappropriate communication strategy after the crisis happened. No evidence showed that BP had a sufficient emergency plan for the worst-case deep-water oil spill although the depth of the oil drilling was one of the deepest. BP’s unseriousness towards safety was also indicated in their attempt to shift blames to its contractors and the unaccountability shown by the words of BP’s executives during interviews. Based on the examination of BP’s deficiency in risk management, the lessons that can be learned from it are discussed. In brief, firstly, accurate risk assessment and appropriate emergency plan should be available before the operation is started. Secondly, post-crisis communication should show the world that the company cares and is accountable