Corporate Social Responsibility Of The BP Oil Spill

The Gulf Oil Spill was and still is a issues for BP that require both its legal team and media relations department to work quick and together to both address the issues and protect the image of the company. In times of scandal or crisis companies have a plan of action to help resolve the issues and reduce how much of media frenzy it becomes. From who speaks at interviews, gives public statements, legal advising, and executing a solution. For BP this meant work with wildlife rescues groups, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, and environmentalist. For BP getting the waters clean was important not only to them but for the environment and those who depended on the waters for survival in term of the sea life. So the concepts of social responsibility by Milton Friedman would play a part of BP ensuring the companies further survival.

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

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

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,

Within hours of the Deepwater Horizon accident, BP teams were working to stop the leak. We also acted to minimize the spill’s impact on the environment by containing, removing and dispersing oil offshore, protecting the shoreline and cleaning up oil that came ashore. And we worked with wildlife groups to develop rescue and rehabilitation programmes for turtles, birds and other species. www.bp.com/ gulfofmexico/inpictures

What responsibility did the executives of BP have in making more socially responsible and safety conscious decisions at the expense of not meeting the consumer demand of cheap gas and thus lowering the returns for shareholders and their own compensation?

The structure of business ethics is voluntary, legal, and core practices. BP and Exxon had an obligation to act ethically in all three areas. Exxon’s 3rd mate was not license to pilot through Prince William Sound. The captain was drunk and asleep and when he was awake and in charge he ignored the Coast Guard’s recommendations. Exxon knew the captain had issues with alcohol. The company hired to do the clean-up was ill-prepared, had damaged equipment, and they also did not have enough equipment to handle the spill. By all appearance BP presented an image

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.

This article refers to the Gulf oil spill reached its don 't-just-stand-there moment. . Every day, the White House responded with updates and briefings. The White House has belatedly gotten the message, announcing new drilling regulations and scheduling the president 's second trip to the Gulf on Friday.

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

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,

The BP Oil Spill An Introductory Background - One of the most controversial ecological disasters in recent history focused on multinational British Petroleum and their Gulf of Mexico Operations. The Deepwater Oil Disaster began on April 20, 2010 with an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon Oil platform, killing 11, injuring 17. It was not until July 15th, however, that the leak was stopped by capping the wellhead, after releasing almost 5 million barrels (206 million gallons) of crude oil, or 53,000 barrels per day into the Gulf of Mexico. It was not until September 19th that the relief well process was complete and the U.S. Government, EPA, and Coast Guard agencies declared the well breach effectively stopped (Cavnar, 2010).

In the month of April 2010, Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing 11 workers and releasing oil from the well into an ocean. This paper will discuss BP management, ethical and social behavior. BP along with a few of its partners Transocean and Halliburton was involved in the gulf oil spill. The explosion of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon was the root cause of the oil spill. This paper will focus on BP organization behavioral issues that caused the economic, environmental, and human losses. The research further focuses on what BP leadership could have done as a precautionary measure using highest ethics and management behavior.

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.

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.