Impact of Legal and Environmental Factors on Pipeline Transportation by British Petroleum

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Pipeline transportation issues.....................................................................................................2
Impact of Environmental and legal PESTLE factors on pipeline transportation.......................4
Environmental........................................................................................................................4
Legal.......................................................................................................................................5
Impact of pipeline transportation on the lives of the indigenous people and local community.6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Industrialization has impacted the surrounding environment drastically and oil and
natural gas companies have been one of the major contributors to the current environmental
issues faced globally. The activities of different oil and gas organizations, starting from the
upstream operations to downstream operations have resulted in harmful impacts on
surrounding flora and fauna. There has been significant increase in concerns from the public
regarding the operational impacts of oil and gas production, transportation and refining. Mid-
stream activities is responsible for transportation of crude oil and major mishaps, such as oil
spills and pipeline leakages have contaminated those areas of discharge. Pipeline safety has
become one of the most critical issues in transportation of oil and gas.
This is one of the major challenges faced by oil and gas companies and in this
scenario, British petroleum has been chosen as the organization of choice. British Petroleum
is one of the largest oil and natural gas companies in the world and falls among the top seven
“supermajors” (BP global 2019). In terms of market capitalization is the among the top six
energy companies in the global market. British petroleum has a long history with accidents
especially in the United States such as giant oil leaks at Prudhoe Bay oilfield which is
considered as one of the largest oil leaks in the United States (Masnadi and Brandt 2017).
The report would highlight the major transportation used by British Petroleum company plc.
along with the impact of legal and environmental factors on transportation using pipelines.
The impact of pipeline transportation on the local community and the indigenous people has
also been discussed in the report.
Pipeline transportation issues
The major pipeline transportation issues faced by British Petroleum is vandalism and
leakage. This issues have been going in on for decades where due to vandalism and leakage,

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BP had to lose a large sum of their market capitalization. The latest statistical review of the
energy resources all over the world shows that BP owns the second largest oil reserves and
the largest gas reserves in Nigeria (Adams 2010). Vandalism is one of the major issues faced
by the company in Nigeria where they have faced incessant attacks by different vandal
groups over the past decades. The number of records of pipeline vandalism in the Nigeria
goes to roughly 3000 cases in the past two decades. There has been sharp increase in those
case in the past decade where vandal groups have become more efficient, criminally
disciplined and sophisticated in performing vandalism of the oil pipelines (Costa et al. 2018).
Criminal activities are very high in countries like Nigeria due to high poverty and people
resort to unfair means to fulfil their livelihood. Militant groups in the Niger Delta are also
causing issues where they have had deliberately attacked different transport pipelines and
killed workers to gain attention and shed light on their grievances.
Similarly, the organization faced similar problems in Iraq, where they had to evacuate
their officials from Rumaila oilfields in the region of Basra (Smithsonian Ocean 2019). The
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico also resulted in protest and vandalism (Ihsmarkit.com 2013).
Oil Spill is another major issue faced by BP over the years where there has been number of
incidents that has heavily contaminated the corresponding environment. The oil spill at the
Deep Horizon oil rig was one of the major oil spills in the history of accidents (Chen 2018).
The oil leak started at the gulf of Louisiana where oil leaked for around 87 days which results
in 3.19 million barrels of oil leaking into the gulf (Smithsonian Ocean 2019). Similarly, in the
year of 2006, BP had to face heavy civil fines due to their two oil spills in the two pipeline
networks in Alaska. This resulted due to the wilful failure of the company to comply with the
guidelines provided by the federal agencies in managing corrosion and maintenance of
pipelines. The investigation of the operations of BP in Alaska clearly showed that poor
maintenance and corrosion of the pipelines in Alaska resulted in more than 5000 barrels of oil