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How Did BP Oil Spill?

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Introduction BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, is the third largest oil and gas producer in the world, producing almost 3.8 million barrels per day. BP was founded in 1908 by William Knox D’Arcy in London, United Kingdom. The company operates worldwide in several sectors of the oil and gas industry such as generating low carbon energy, moving oil and gas, and off and onshore oil and gas extraction (BP, 2014). However, the offshore Deepwater Horizon oil spill that happened on April 20th, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the greatest oil spills that took place in history. The disaster caused the loss of the lives of 11 workers, severely injuring 17 workers, and the aftermath had a great impact on the environment in the Gulf of Mexico. The series of ethical issues that took place leading to the disaster are complex, and other factors such as economic and political issues arose after the catastrophe happened. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical issues that took place before the disaster happened, and investigate the moral obligations, social responsibility and justice at an individual and organizational level. The ethical dilemma is broken down into three categories, which include the company’s management priority to reduce costs and time, neglecting safety issues addressed by staff, human misjudgment and errors in neglecting pressure reading; and finally, overlooking the technical design flaws that were not tested by BP before installing to use. The

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