BP’s Oil Spill Disaster

Running Head: BP’s Oil Spill Disaster
Corporate Responsibility and governance
Essay
System04104
1/2/2019

BP’s Oil Spill Disaster
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BP’s Oil Spill Disaster
The BP oil spill/leak (also referred to as the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil
spill, or Deepwater Horizon oil spill) is an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010, in
the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Mocondo Prospect. It was one of the largest marine
oil spills in the petroleum industry and according to a report published by the American
government 4.9 million barrels oil discharge in water. The expert assumes after watching the
leaking video that daily leakage rate of oil was 1,900,000-3,000,000 litres per day (Hsu, Liu,
Yang, & Chou, 2013). There are many people and parties affected directly or indirectly with
this environmental disaster such as people who depends on seafood business, fisherman, and
people who work in tourism.
Ethics provides a set of standards that help us to decide how an individual or group of
people should behave in a certain situation (Resnik, Miller, Kwok, Engel, & Sandler, 2015).
If we considering this then we can say that corporate ethics is all about the making correct
choices and good decision-making in a certain situation and shows the corporate
responsibility and accountability towards the people and the environment.
This incident was totally overseen by the US government in the starting of the oil spill
incident and the other Federal Government agency such as the Minerals management service.
The evidence shows that the poor corporate governance and unethical practice of BP’s was
the major cause behind this incident. The Company oversight the issues of safety, health, and
environment and also formed various sub-committees that were conducted by various few
directors where there was no transparency and public scrutiny involved. The main focus of
BP's corporate governance was to enhance the profit of the company and achieve the high
growth rate by exploiting workers and the natural environment. The president of US at that
time was Barack Obama was totally failed to identify such issue and his first address about
this matter came after roughly two months later. Even government restrict the press entry and
make it impossible for the press to provide information to people about this matter (Choi,
2012).
Some of the major ethical decisions and questions arise in this disaster is related to
moral and legal obligations of the company because no one can ignore the importance of
wildlife and the environment. The Deepwater Horizon spill is not only how deep it is, but the