Environmental Damage From the BP Oil Spill

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The outcome a disaster leaves a huge impact on the society from several perspectives. Whether it is the whole management or the individual groups connected with the disaster intentionally or unintentionally, environment hazards that result due to the disaster would not ease and continue to affect the lives. Moral and ethical issues may completely become unaddressed sometimes and need some intervention.

Government, policy makers or stakeholders have a vital role to play in view of the disasters. In the similar context, the present description is concerned with a case namely, Environmental damage from the BP oil spill. The BP oil spill disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 due to the explosion from a coal carrying ship. The incident site is located southeast of Lousiana port of Venice at a distance of 52 miles.

Nearly 11 to 15 crew members were missing out of126 workers on board at the blast time and the operation was rig-drilling and there was no production (Graham, 2010). In detail, the known facts about the case are that the total BP spillage was 11 million gallons which is shorter than that occurred from the undersea well spillage of 17 to 39 million gallons. It is considered bigger than Exxon Valdez.

More than 150 endangered or threatened sea turtles and 316 sea birds were reported dead. Large oil slick was being captured by the Loop Current and was considered detrimental to the areas of west coast of Florida and Florida Keys. This would also put Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico at risk due to oil seepage through the Florida Straits (Buczynski Beth, 2012).

On the other hand, unknown facts that raised questions are that it was not fully known how much leakage resulted from the disaster in terms of barrels like 1000 or more.

Some claim that due to negligence and ignoring warnings, BP has involvement in few oil and gas disasters over the past ten years. The exact possibility of the spill was unknown and not precisely mentioned in terms of effect of disaster location on the marine animals, fisheries and beaches.

It was not known whether the management precisely followed a standardized technical strategy like, a remote-control shut-off utilized by two different oil-producing nations, for preventing underwater spills. Similarly, how much fines have been paid in millions by BP to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the wake of the disaster is not fully known (Emami, 2006).

Recently, it was revealed that there was a settlement issue between BP and plaintiffs and BP still works on claims (BP, Plaintiffs, 2012). It can be concluded that BP oil industry is partial in its fulfillment of the expected solution.

Individual crew members may be failing to raise their voices to bring the actual scenario to the forefront of public. With this, the issue of BP oil spill turned out to be more than legal as it has put the marine life and human life in the vicinity of the disaster under peril.

More probably, oil industries have no safeguard mechanism to avoid disasters. As such stringent legal conditions may apply for the companies held responsible for the disaster.

This could streamline the management of oil industries deeply involved in oil drilling operations and could alleviate any future disastrous events on shore. As stated previously, BP industry has many claims relevant to Gulf states and its associates, and the US government with the settlement costs of nearly $7.8 billion (BP, Plaintiffs, 2012).

Yet, the role of company leadership in the BP oil spill case is not up to the mark, as the environment damage was poorly assessed. This indicated that the leadership has poor rapport with the PR professionals and media advisers. But it is striving hard to get out of the crisis situation instead of combating against the case actively.

The staff at the senior level have not realized or been given suggestions on handling the crisis and public reactions towards the company with regard to the loss of environmental stability offshore. But, there was no reduction in the true leadership attitude among volunteers and community members.

As such, a good motivation has slowly taken its form and driven them to mitigate the effects of spill. This has indicated a true spirit, positively. However, on the negative side, the leadership is failing to recognize that government leaders are present to assist them and the people of the risk of losses.

This was not recognized by the leadership members; and instead their blame game attitude is weakening the courage to handle the disaster led economic burden (Corkindale, 2010).

So, the crew members, Mineral Management Service (MMS), rig agents and technical groups are considered to have an important stake in the oil spill outcome. This is because the interaction among crew members and rig agents or technical groups was strongly believed to be role playing for all essential crew operations. Hence, these members have to pay off heavily.

After that, activities like gaming or other unacceptable deeds, agency staff members taking tickets to lunches, sports fares and accepting gifts from oil and gas companies have become a concern. At the agency, these concerns reflect a kind of ‘anything-goes atmosphere’ (Webb, 2010). This may be considered as one of the potential flaws in the oil spill case management.

Added to this, unbalanced precedence has interfered making it functional at times among the groups like a biased prolonged team leadership. Thus, the role of precedence, may be agreed, although it appears partial, and have affected the BP oil industry and the system of environment monitoring on shore during operations.

Nevertheless, on these grounds, there are several approaches for consideration and putting into action. Firstly, in view of Utilitarian Approach, the BP oil industry has not provided adequate safety. By putting the lives of endangered species at risk, it has done more harm than good. Therefore, this Utilitarian approach sounds good in contributing to goodness rather than harm.

In the context of Rights Approach, members involved in the oil rig operation have their full rights to express their willingness to do a particular job. However, overlooking of certain job responsibilities has resulted in the disorientation of rights that reflect particular duties.

The justice approach has a rigid impact on the life of humans. During the oil spill disaster, circumstances of unfair nature may have made the individuals, the agency members related to BP oil firm to be become work irresponsive.

On ethical grounds, it is important for oil rig operation members to strive for the welfare of the society. During oil spill disaster, the approach practiced by the agency members may not reflect their attitude towards the better welfare of the community as this case has drawn the attention of public stringent reactions. So, the Common Good Approach becomes applicable here.

Further, virtue approach better determines the kind of action taken by a particular individual, it is the significant option to choose to act as a person one want to be at the best level.

Crew or agency members of BP oil firm have overlooked their own responsibilities for no good reason. This could have averted oil spill cases like that of BP’s.

But, BP oil factory’s decision following the oil disaster appears more damaging to the economy of many nations that produce oil and also US. At this particular instant, MMS personnel, political leaders would be consulted to assess the problem of environmental hazard from all corners such that a good decision could be taken in choosing a correct strategy and avoiding a bad outcome.

Taken together, among various ethical courses and approaches identified so far, the utilitarian approach best addresses the situation. This could be due to the fact that since environmental damage imposes financial load, the utilitarian approach ensures relief allocation which is a stable and of consistent measure.

It ensures compensation to job losers, victims’ families keeping in view of losses as per the legal precedent. This approach works on the grounds that it could provide a life-long community service, unbiased sacrifice with courage to the losers (The Ethics of Disaster Relief, 2002).

There is a need to implement action decision firstly by understanding the issues faced by Stakeholders or working with them, as certain soft, manageable issues of oil spill case have become hard (Grayson & Denyer, 2010). This will be done through organizational resilience strategy, and by ensuring rapid communication about the ongoing affairs,(Grayson & Denyer, 2010).

On these grounds, stakeholders might be persuaded at the optimum level to resolve the environmentsl issues to evaluate the legitimacy of ocean being polluted by ocean (Ohreen, 2010). As many stakeholders were being hurt by the BP in its public statements, they should be careful and safeguard themselves with the every activity undertaken by the corporate firms (BP’s Gulf Oil Spill, 2010).

From this case, it was learned that BP oil spill case has caused huge economic burden, putting the environment at risk. Ethically, the value of marine life and the victim families has been compromised.

As oil spill has led to the release of chemical dispersant of nearly 771,000 gallons near the sea floor,Use of liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) and ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry would help to make quantitative analysis of chemicals like anionic surfactant DOSS (dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate) which is an important ingredient of the dispersant.

Rates of biodegradation of released compounds will be better revealed (Kujawinski et al., 2011).

Next strategy, from my personal experience will be focused on the application of risk parameters, reviewing protocols, earlier oil spill cases, published results. This helps to streamline the management of disasters, evaluating seafood safety, enabling stakeholders to devise a monitoring strategy (Gohlke et al., 2011).

Approaching government agencies like U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will further help to asses the danger involved in exposure of population, especially, developing child and newborns to oil spill chemicals like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (Ellman, Wong & Solomon,2012).

Finally, ethical committee would be setup to monitor the ongoing agency activities and evaluate the feedback from the members. It can be concluded that BP oil spill case has many twists since the time the disaster took place.

Being regarded as the major disaster in the US history, the oil spill has left many people jobless and few lifeless. Animals do have become prey to the gigantic oil spill predator. Economic burden incurred following the disaster is huge and gradually receiving the attention from the action of lawsuits. Future endeavors need to be scaled up at rapid speed to address the safety ethical and moral issues.

References

BP’s Gulf Oil Spill: Where Ethics and Legal Advice Collide. (2010). Web.

BP, Plaintiffs Reach Deal In Gulf Oil Spill Case. (2012). Web.

Buczynski Beth.(2012).Gulf Oil Spill: 10 Horrifying Facts You Never Wanted To Know. Web.

Corkindale Gill (2010). Five Leadership Lessons from the BP Oil Spill. Web.

Ellman Rotkin, M., Wong, K. K., Solomon, G.M.(2012).Seafood contamination after the BP Gulf oil spill and risks to vulnerable populations: a critique of the FDA risk assessment. Environ Health Perspect,120(2),157-61.

Emami Gazelli. (2006). BP Oil Spill: 7 Secrets BP Doesn’t Want You To Know. Web.

Farell Justin. Web.

Gohlke, J. M., Doke, D., Tipre, M., Leader, M., Fitzgerald, T. (2011).A review of seafood safety after the deepwater horizon blowout. Environ Health Perspect, 119(8), 1062-9.

Graham Michael, R. (2010). BP Gulf Oil Spill Cheat Sheet: A Timeline of Unfortunate Events. Web.

Grayson David & Denyer David. (2010).Reflections on the BP Oil Spill Crisis. Web.

Kujawinski, E. B., Kido Soule, M. C., Valentine, D. L., Boysen, A. K., Longnecker, K., Redmond, M. C.(2011). Fate of Dispersants Associated with the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Environ Sci Technol. [Epub ahead of print].

Ohreen David. (2010). Opinion: BP puts costs ahead of environment. Are we surprised?Web.

The Ethics of Disaster Relief. (2002). Web.

Webb Susan. (2010). BP oil rig disaster is big setback for Big Oil. Web.

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Environmental Damage From the BP Oil Spill

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