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Introduction
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico is regarded as one of the most severe ecological disasters of recent decades. The oil spill continued for months, which led to irreversible effects on the environment, causing damage to the wildlife and ecosystem that is difficult to estimate. The peculiar detail is that B.P., responsible for the oil spill, was accused of spreading the lies, felony, and several cases of misdemeanors in the court, trying to use its connection with the U.S. government to avoid punishment. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill illustrates the mechanisms of exercising social power and reflects the complex relationship between crime, corporations, and the state.
This situation shows that corporate influence and international political processes impact the abuse of human rights, and violations of the criminal law are discussed and persecuted. It is problematic to find justice in complicated cases where many organizations are responsible for the company’s work. Moreover, the strategies the corporation uses after the crisis influences the formation of public attitude to the situation, which is critical in the political and social spheres. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the subsequent conduct of B.P. showed that the corporation’s faith in its authority, power of money, and ability to influence governmental decisions and public attitudes led to the reckless behavior and neglect of the legislation.
Discussion and Analysis
The incident on the B.P. oil platform led to an ecological catastrophe and contributed to the death of people. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill near the Louisiana coast in 2010 led to the death of 11 people who worked there and to the ocean pollution with more than 3 million barrels of oil (Dannreuther 2021). B.P., the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon platform, could not completely stop the pollution of the ocean for more than four months (Dannreuther 2021). As a result, approximately 1.300 miles of the coastline and 499 square miles of the ocean surface were polluted by the crude oil (Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee 2018). Therefore, the damage of the oil spill on the wildlife, coastal line, and ocean from the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon was significant, which required the reaction of the American government and the international community to this situation.
It is difficult to estimate the damage caused to the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater oil spill because its negative consequences still have an adverse influence on the local environment. The most significant financial allocations tried to improve this situation by donating money and people to research and restoration activities. For instance, such organizations as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Gulf Research Program, and the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative have been developed to optimize funding allocations (Henkel and Dausman 2020). B.P. was responsible for improving the ecosystem and eliminating the problems caused by the oil spill, but the company received practical support from other international organizations and local agencies (Kassinis and Panayiotou 2018). It shows that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has become a global problem that requires the international community’s help because the corporation cannot cope with its adverse outcomes for ecology.
The problem is that the environmental catastrophe caused by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent pollution of the ocean with crude oil is not eliminated years after it happened. The Deepwater Horizon Project Tracker Tool details all reported funding allocations directed to restoration and conservation activities. While there have been significant investments in restoring and conserving of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystems, they are still at the early stages of their recovery (Henkel and Dausman 2020). Therefore, the ecosystem continues to experience the same problems as a decade ago.
The functioning of the Deepwater Horizon was connected with the legal status of the international corporation. B.P. employed specialists from various countries and worked on the offshore territories, making the case difficult to analyze from the legal point of view (Rouhani et al. 2017). For instance, engineering teams from several countries worked on the platform when the explosion happened. Therefore, all contractors worked using their materials, personnel, and equipment and used their national legislation and management regulations to evaluate their actions (Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee 2018). This situation made the Deepwater Horizon the example of the international judicial case, which made applying legal norms to B.P. in general and all operators in particular problematic.
There were many legal proceedings between the related parties and B.P. after the explosion and the oil spill. For instance, B.P. filed invoices against multiple organizations, including Happiburton, Transocean, MOEX, Anadarko, and Cameron. These legal actions lasted for five years, starting in 2010 and ending in 2015 when Halliburton and B.P. came to terms concerning the contribution to Transocean of $125 million (Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee 2018). This information shows that the legal case of B.P. was complicated, and there were many sides in the proceedings, which made the process of investigation difficult for the court. All parties shared responsibilities and worked on the Deepwater Horizon, making the search for the guilty side problematic.
Therefore, the failure of B.P. to work according to the international standards of safety and preserve high quality leads to significant expenses. The study by Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee (2018) aimed to calculate the ultimate costs borne by B.P. due to considerable expenses, charges, reimbursements, and fines following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It provides computation details and extensive data from several investigation reports. These include “the B.P. report (2010), the Commission Report (National Commission on the B.P. Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drillings Final Report, 2011), and the Joint Report (BOEMRE/U.S. Coast Guard Joint Investigation Team, 2011)” (Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee 2018, p. 70). Apart from B.P., several other parties are identified as responsible for the sequence of failures that have resulted in the Deepwater oil spill. These include Transocean, Cameron, Halliburton, Weatherford, and Schlumberger (Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee 2018). This example shows that many parties were interested in the Deepwater Horizon case and the international business opportunities that worked in the oil industry were promising. At the same time, multiple companies that worked together in one corporation led to the absence of one responsible center that controlled quality and safety issues.
The critical issue of corruption and opportunities for international corporations to avoid punishment for their crimes does not allow the judicial system to function without flaws. Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee (2018) argue that the ultimate costs documented by the study are more than double $62 billion, the prices reported by B.P. in its income statement. A detailed timeline with a list of legal proceedings held between B.P. and other parties illustrates this statement vividly. It shows that B.P. tried to change the court’s opinion by using the money for several years until making the final decision (Gyo Lee, Garza-Gomez, and Lee 2018). The assessment of the ultimate costs of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and identifying the involvement of different parties in the incident shows that the corporation spent much money on its attempts to avoid justice and hide the violation of safety rules connected with the work on the offshore drill unit.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill dramatically impacts the national and international levels. First, it showed that international cooperation in business makes work coordination complicated. It is difficult to find those responsible for the safety rules, quality of work, and solving critical situations. The Deepwater Horizon officially belonged to B.P., and it was logical that most people associated it with the functioning of this corporation. The peculiar detail was that ordinary Americans started connecting B.P. (British Petroleum) with Great Britain, which led to adverse consequences for British business in the United States (Sandifer et al., 2021). The emphasis on B.P. as the corporation responsible for the oil spill was the false accusation and oversimplification, which caused an adverse reaction of British Petroleum, which tried to protect its brand name.
The consequences of the oil spill and subsequent court decisions concerning the environmental harm and violation of safety rules were destructive for the corporation. For instance, B.P.’s agreements with the federal government were annihilated due to the lack of professional integrity of the corporation after the court decision concerning the oil spill was ratified (Marshall, Bryan, and Wolpe 2018). The company was obliged to pay various foundations and commissions that reported the ecological harm. Moreover, B.P.’s reputation in the United States was spoilt by the media scandal, which led to a decrease in the business activity of the company (Marshall, Bryan, and Wolpe 2018). This example shows that the reputation of the corporation has a direct impact on the business opportunities of the company.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill can be discussed using attribution and stakeholder theories concerning different parties’ perceptions of this event. For example, B.P. employees who answered questions about the explosion after it happened presented the same factual account of events but demonstrated different perceptions of these aspects. They blamed various parties for the oil spill, including BP, Tony Hayward, MMS, Halliburton, President Obama, Heavy Hyundai Industries, and Transocean (Kessler et al. 2017). In other words, even those people who worked for B.P. at that moment had various perceptions of the situation. Other individuals who learned about the oil spill from the media also had different views on the situation, which shows that the public attitude to the environmental incident was not unanimous.
The organizations typically apply two perspectives in emergencies: sense-making and attribution processes because they allow people to understand how to react in new circumstances. Different types of stakeholders and passive and active attribution styles they applied proved to have a significant impact on the form of organization-related blame (Kessler et al. 2017). Therefore, the company’s reaction to the critical event is partially pre-determined by the patterns it usually uses in communicating with people and overcoming essential situations.
It is possible to hypothesize that individuals’ perceptions of the blame for the Deepwater oil spill were highly dependent on their involvement in the incident and the attribution style they were prone to use. The article claims that “attribution styles interact with attributions of blame by both active and passive stakeholders,” and the authors eventually find support for this hypothesis (Kessler et al. 2017, p. 1588). It has been proved that “passive stakeholders with an optimistic attributional style” were more likely to blame the following leaders and organizations: “Tony Hayward, Transocean, Halliburton, President Obama, and Heavy Hyundai” (Kessler et al. 2017, p. 1588). It allows us to conclude that the perceptions of the blame placed on leaders and corporations are shaped and shared based both on the context of the situation and the company’s policy.
There are critical ethical aspects of the response programs and strategies implemented by B.P. in the aftermath of the oil spill. The Report to the President, “prepared by the National Commission on the B.P. Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling,” is a primary source of factual data (Schwartz 2020, p. 73). The main argument posed by Schwartz is the statement that B.P. and other parties involved have demonstrated unethical behaviors and attitudes concerning the events both leading to and following the explosion (Schwartz 2020). Revenue generation and profit maximization are claimed to have prevented “both the oil industry and the U.S. regulators” from taking measures that would have been more appropriate (Schwartz 2020). Unless ethical principles of decision-making are taken into account by future leaders and senior managers, the crises of the past decades are likely to happen again. Therefore, the ethical aspects and implications of the management’s behaviors and practices during an emergency are vital in problem-solving.
The B.P. management’s informational, attitudinal, and behavioral initiatives determine the public attitude to the discussed case. The main argument presented by Kanso, Nelson, and Kitchen (2019) is that, in many ways, B.P. downplayed the severity of the crisis. In addition to understanding the numerous factors leading to the crimes committed by the company, it is also essential to consider and analyze the actions taken after the accident. The main issue is that B.P. gained the corporation’s public image that was responsible for violating safety rules that endangered global ecology and did not react adequately to the problem it created. Therefore, it contributed to the negative perception of B.P. in the United States, which was directly affected by the oil spill.
Analyzing the crimes attributed to B.P., it is essential to mention several measures the company has taken to mitigate the consequences of the Deepwater oil spill. To restore its image, B.P. conducted a range of public relations activities, interacting with different groups and organizations, including the American government, clients, shareholders, the Gulf Coast residents, media, and the general public (Kanso, Nelson and Kitchen 2019, p. 11). Weaknesses of the campaign promoted in the aftermath of the crisis included B.P.’s denial of responsibilities and its choice of a public relations firm that “did not specialize in crisis communication” (Kanso, Nelson, and Kitchen 2019, p. 19). In addition, the company was not transparent and honest about its responsibilities, trying to manipulate the public.
Conclusion
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to an environmental catastrophe in the region and had severe adverse outcomes for B.P. The corporation worked internationally, which supposed its global presence and outsourcing technologies and employees from different countries. Therefore, it was challenging to ensure that all contractors worked according to the safety rules, which harmed the reputation of the corporation and made its future work challenging. After the incidence, B.P. lost most people’s loyalty, which negatively influenced other British companies that worked in the United States.
Even though these connections were not wholly correct, and B.P. was a global corporation with various companies under one brand name, the reputation risks belonged to British Petroleum. It showed managers the importance of the brand name and understanding of the responsibilities of preserving its reputation among the general audience. Even though all parties in the conflict are satisfied, the harm to the corporation and the environment is irreversible. It foregrounds the necessity of preserving safety rules and controlling oil-producing companies’ work, which might decrease the risks of environmental catastrophes.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill showed the reckless attitude of the corporation to the norms of the legislation due to its high status in international business and authority. The consequences of this case are not eliminated even now, both in the context of environmental protection and restoring B.P.’s reputation. It is possible to assume that B.P. is associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and this situation might not change in the future. At the same time, the corporation has already implemented changes in its safety regulations that might protect the environment from similar incidents. Other companies that work in this sphere might also take lessons from B.P.’s experience and improve the safety rules and the quality of work on their platforms.
Reference List
Dannreuther, N. M., Halpern, D., Rullkötter, J., and Yoerger, D. (2021). Technological developments since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Oceanography 34(1), pp. 192–211.
Gyo Lee, Y., Garza-Gomez, X. and Lee, R., 2018. Ultimate Costs of the Disaster: Seven Years After the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 29(1), pp. 69-79.
Henkel, J. and Dausman, A. (2020). A short history of funding and accomplishments post-Deepwater Horizon. Shore & Beach, 88(1), pp. 11–16.
Kanso, A. M., Nelson, R. A. and Kitchen, P. J. (2019). BP and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: A case study of how company management employed public relations to restore a damaged brand. Journal of Marketing Communications, 26(7), pp. 1–29.
Kassinis, G., and Panayiotou, A. (2018). Visuality as greenwashing: The case of BP and Deepwater Horizon. Organization & Environment, 31(1), pp. 25–47.
Kessler, S. R., Mahoney, K. T., Randolph-Seng, B., Martinko, M. J. and Spector, P. E. (2017). The Effects of Attribution Style and Stakeholder Role on Blame for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Business & Society, 58(8), pp. 1572–1598.
Marshall, B. W., and Wolpe, B. C. (2018). The committee: A study of policy, power, politics and Obama’s historic legislative agenda on Capitol Hill. University of Michigan Press.
Rouhani, S., Baker, M. C., Steinhoff, M., Zhang, M., Oehrig, M., Zelo, J., Emsbo-Mattingly, S. D., Nixon, Z., Willis, J. M., and Hester, M. W. (2017). Nearshore exposure to Deepwater Horizon oil. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 576, pp. 111–24.
Sandifer, P. A., Ferguson, A., Finucane, M. L., Partyka, M., Solo-Gabriele, H. M., Walker, A. H., Wowk, K., Caffey, R., and Yoskowitz, D. (2021). Human health and socioeconomic effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Oceanography 34(1), pp. 174–91.
Schwartz, M. S. (2020). Beyond petroleum or bottom line profits only? An ethical analysis of BP and the Gulf oil spill. Business and Society Review, 125(1), pp. 71–88.
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