Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

The staff of the BP Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore drilling Commission said in a report delivered said, BP “did not have policies and systems in place to ensure that decisions made to reduce costs and improve efficiency do not increase risks or diminish safety”. The management of this

The BP oil spill affected how leadership was looked at by stakeholders as they were demanding responsibilities from leaders over what had happened. What worked well for leadership in BP was that there was more awareness and corporate social responsibility that was focused on in order to save their reputation. In the National Geographic article “Is Deepwater Drilling Safer, 5 Years After Worst Oil Spill?, the article explains how the oil industry is more socially responsible when performing their tasks explained as “After a six-month U.S. ban on deepwater drilling and a slew of technological and regulatory changes, business is back in the Gulf—with an increasing share of drilling occurring in deep waters at least 500 feet (132 meters) below

In 1908, BP was founded under the name Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1954 they changed their name to British Petroleum and merged with Amoco in 1998. (BP Public Website, 2010) “The Texas City Refinery is BP’s largest and most complex oil refinery... It was owned and operated by Amoco prior to the merger of BP and Amoco.” (Michael P. Broadribb, 2006) Throughout their history, there have been a number of accidents that have been caused by negligence and disregard of safety precautions. Unfortunately many lives have been cut short or seriously injured as a result. My research will focus on the 2005 Texas City Oil Refinery Explosion. I will attempt to look into the ethical implications that surrounded this disaster before and after the event and suggest what BP could have done to prevent the incident then and in the future.

Looking back on the night of March 24, 1989 when the Exxon Valdez left port, it seemed as though the ship had only lasted as long as it had by running on luck and hope. With the company trying to save money and the crew working on fumes, things were headed down a dark path. One of the wonderful things about being human is our ability to look back on events that have occurred and learn from them. Unfortunately for Exxon, it took a catastrophic accident like this one to show how operations could be improved and how to be better prepared for the unexpected. These events are broken down to shed light on what made the Exxon Valdez accident a mess from port departure to today.

The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the largest offshore oil spills in U.S. history, BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010. This paper seeks to investigate closely the system and the reasons of failure, to answer the questions behind numerous studies on this accident, Is Deepwater Horizon explosion inevitable? and What can we do to avoid such accidents?

The Exxon-Valdez oil spill occurred on March 24, 1989, when the tanker Exxon Valdez, transporting oil from Valdez, Alaska to Los Angeles, California, ran aground on the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The root cause of the accident was the captain. After passing through Valdez Narrows, pilot Murphy left the vessel and Captain Hazelwood took over the wheelhouse. It was Captain Hazelwood who made the decision to steer the ship off its normal path in order to avoid a run in with ice. For reasons that remain unclear, as Captain Hazelwood retired in his quarters, his copilots Cousins and Kagan failed to make the turn back into the shipping lanes and the ship ran aground on Bligh Reef at 12:04 a.m., March 24, 1989. There have been several speculations on what occurred, however, The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the accident and determined five probable causes of the grounding: (1) The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue and excessive workload; (2) the master failed to provide a proper navigation watch, possibly due to impairment from alcohol; (3) Exxon Shipping Company failed to supervise the master and provide a rested and sufficient crew for the Exxon Valdez; (4) the U.S. Coast Guard failed to provide an effective vessel traffic system; and (5) effective pilot and escort services were lacking.

Now we have to look at, the many organizations that responded to the oil spill and their roles in the recovery process. First, we should look at how the government responded to this particular disaster. According to Steffy (2011), after the spill the government issued new regulations, for shallow water-wells and issued fewer permits following the events. This makes sense and no-one would fault the government for taking such action in the aftermath of the disaster. The BP oil spill was a giant disaster and they decided to act quickly until they could make sure all issues were resolved and took a stance to make sure it didn’t happen again near their waters. By taking such actions the government is trying to mitigate any future disasters from oil drilling. The BP oil spill showed how old and outdated, some regulations probably were at the time, and that sometimes they need to be updated to meet current standards in order to provide better safety standards for everyone. This can also show how maybe there was too much oversight, in that the government was allowing these oil companies too much leeway in terms of drilling and not monitoring them to make sure everything is working properly. When you do something like this, you can run into some problems, so it is great to hear that after this disaster happened, the government stepped in and said

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the BP oil spill was located in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. This was the largest due to the impact it had on the environment. The oil company British Petroleum, chartered a mobile drilling rig that was drilling a deep exploratory well thousands of feet below the sea level. The rig was located in the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon. The spill was first discovered when large amounts of oil were starting to spread around the rig site. This leak is considered to be one of the worst human inflicted disasters to have ever taken place. It has been an important topic in both political and economic discussions and an extremely costly event. BP has taken the blame for the spill, but a problem with the rig was what initiated the disaster when methane from the well rose into the rig and ignited it. This could have been avoided if there were more safety regulations in place and a better security net. Both the government and oil companies should ensure their equipment and drilling methods are completely safe before putting the environment at such risk.

Exxon Mobil is a combination of two of the United States’ oldest oil companies: Jersey Standard and Vacuum Oil Company. These companies are 2 of the 34 oil companies that Standard Oil was broken up into after the 1911 Supreme Court decision that ended John D. Rockefeller’s trust. The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States case decision was made after the court deemed the Standard Oil Company’s monopoly on oil businesses unnecessary and in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The name Exxon Mobil is devised after Jersey Standard changes its name to the Exxon Corporation in 1972 and also when Vacuum Oil Company changes its name to Mobil Oil Company in 1966. After being split for 88 years, the two corporations finally merge to become the Exxon Mobil Corporation on November 30, 1999. Based in the United States, the corporation is known around the world by the following three brands: Exxon, Esso, and Mobil. Esso was created by Jersey Standard in 1926 when the company releases a new blend of fuel; the name features the initials of their former company Standard Oil. Ten years before the merge, Exxon’s ship in Prince William Sound, Alaska, the Exxon Valdez faced a terrible oil spill in Alaska on March 24, 1989. Although the company claimed responsibility for their action and quickly cleaned up their mess, should Exxon Valdez done more or did they do enough to compensate for their mistake (ExxonMobil)?

Both the Exxon and British Petroleum spills were tragic to the wildlife, environment, economy and local citizens. In each scenario, the disaster could have been avoided, thus the organizations had to change their views on how to operate in the future years. The following essay will describe Exxon’s organizational performance and change goals, as well as, a comparison between the Exxon and British Petroleum spills.

The key causes in the BP disaster case include the lack of oversight on management. There were many warning signs but they were ignored (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). BP wanted to complete the Gulf of Mexico project because it was running weeks behind schedule and over budget. BP wanted to complete the well so they started making shortcuts that contributed to the disaster and oil spill. On April 20, 2010 there was an explosion and it was one of the worst disaster America has ever faced. The disaster killed eleven individuals working on the oil drilling platform, and caused about four million barrels of crude oil to dump into the Gulf of Mexico (Iaquinto, 2012). A dangerous buildup of gas in the well caused an explosion and fire that destroyed

There are a few reasons identified as how the oil spill occurred. One reason was that the Exxon Shipping Company failed to supervise the Captain who was thought to be heavily drinking on the night of the crash. Exxon also didn’t provide a rested and sufficient crew for the Exxon Valdez, possibly to save money.

The incident shows that some corporate litigations are unavoidable, and they can be very costly to the organization. Therefore, organizations should play an active role in preventing or dealing with litigations. An organization must analyze its environment to identify risks, and insure itself against major risks. BP was involved in oil drilling in the deep sea, the company should have identified all the risks involved. Additionally, most organizations face litigations because they fail to communicate effectively after a crisis, BP should have adopted an open approach of communication to all stakeholders. Families of the victims needed to be informed about the search mission, and their concerns needed to be answered. Apart from open communication, an organization can minimize litigations by understanding applicable laws and maintaining a higher standard of safety. Maintaining high standards of safety can be very costly, but litigations are more

The 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill was the largest ship-based oil spill in US waters where more than 11 million gallons of crude oil poured into the Gulf of Alaska after the ship ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The main causes of the accident were attributed to a fatigued crew, a lack of a proper navigation team while transiting through the Sound, and an inadequate ship design. The oil spill led to federal legislation for ship hull requirements, oil spill prevention and response improvements, and new escorting requirements through the Sound.

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.