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ETHICAL PROBLEMS

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BP OIL

Introduction

Ethical problems are the occurrence in most companies in any field and therefore the BP oil company is no exception (A & Sharples, 2010). These are the situations that might need an organization or an individual to make a choice between what is right or wrong that is between what is termed as ethical or unethical. This paper will discuss all these problems in the BP oil and gas company by discussing how they occurred and how they were solved or rectified. The paper will also discuss how the company has been exposed by whistleblowers and how it has been able to repair its image to the better company it is today.

BP also known as British Petroleum is a global oil and gas company whose headquarters are located in London, England. It has renewable energy interests in wind power as well as the biofuels BP also carries its operations in all oil and gas industry, for example, generating power, marketing, and distribution, production and exploration, trading and petrochemicals etc. (Robyn, 2011). BP has become operational worldwide and it has its operations in more than seventy countries in the whole world, it has its largest division in BP America in the United States of America. BP is among the famous seven oil and gas companies otherwise known as “super majors”. In the year 2012, it became the sixth biggest oil and gas companies in the world and it had the biggest revenue (turnover) (Scherer, 2012).

BP has been facing so many challenges and has faced some environmental and safety situations. These incidences have caused the company suffers so much loss through the fines demanded by the courts. Among these issues are; an explosion that took place in Texas City I the year 2005, this explosion caused the death of 15 workers, it has also gone through lots of oil spills for example the largest Britain largest oil spill on the northern slopes of Alaska. In the year 2010, there was the biggest spill in Deepwater Horizon which was termed as an accidental release of oil into the marine waters which broke the records of all the other spills (Scherer, 2012). This incidence brought about very unpleasant health, economic and environmental results also very tight repercussions on legal and public relations to the company.

Ethical dilemmas which in other words could be known as moral dilemmas; these are events where one has to make choices between two options which do not even resolve the situation in an ethical manner, this means that if one chooses one situation he or she has to transgress the other choice. Ethical dilemmas give an assumption that the one choosing will be bound by societal norms for example religious teachings or codes of law so as to be able to make the ethical choice impossible.

Ethical problems of BP

After the unfortunate occurrences of the gas explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshores, BP faced several lawsuits due to its way of putting profits ahead of everything including environment and safety (Exxon Valdez to Deepwater Horizon, 2011). There have been so many discussions about the company on how they never even gave the causes of blowouts and the gas explosion; they did not even give a clear explanation of what had gone wrong at the moment of those incidences. BP has been charged or convicted for at least three times due to environmental offenses or crimes Texas and Alaska which included two felonies. BP accepted the crimes and did not plead guilty therefore it still remains on probation for the crimes committed. Negligence as many might call has caused the company the greatest fines for the willful work safety and environmental violation in the United States of America’s history (Garsten, & Hernes, 2011). There has been an investigation in the company due to the several negligence cases of the company in the Washington DC State which cost them $69000 fine for very major and intensive safety violation at the BP’s Cherry Point refinery which is near Ferndale, Wash.

It is ironical that after all the evidence of negligence and crimes that BP has committed it does not admit that it’s guilty of the environmental and safety violations and failures. In the past few incidences and years, there have been several ethically questionable and illegal behaviors that have been undertaken by the BP company. This has been proved by some reviews carried out in the history of the company. Examples are;

The unfortunate event that took place in the year 2005; the explosion at the BP’s refinery in Texas City which is near Galveston Texas, the explosion killed 15 workers of the company and 180 people were injured it also left the people who lived near the refinery be misplaced from their own homes. The company was investigated by the US Chemical Safety and Hazard team which found some deficiencies and blamed the organization for the explosion by saying that there was management weakness and failures (Robyn, 2011). The management failures were visible and could be traced from the refinery in Texas to London. The company paid a fine of $50 million after pleading guilty to the crime of clean air violation and further it was sentenced to three years of probation (Robyn, 2011). There were other 270 safety violations that had been stated before and the inspectors found that they had not been fixed and the new violations were 439 which later cost BP $87 million. The problem here is that after pleading guilty BP has been appealing for the fine that they paid (Garsten & Hernes, 2011). As a result of this explosion, some workers in the company have complained of problems in their respiratory systems and even the ones that experienced have been complaining after several years. Instead of BP taking responsibility for their oil spill for example cater for the hospital bills for the affected persons they continue to appeal on the fines they paid (Scherer, 2012).

The Alaska case even made the company’s name and reputation be doubted by many and it drew much attention from reporters and all media channels. The Exxon was a partner BP in Alaska and there had been an Exxon Valdez oil spill years ago (Prologue, n.d.). It was then headed by an executive from BP who had a loan to the pipeline company. There was a case of a whistleblower in this case because there were documents that were leaked to the news reporters and congress that revealed how Alyeska did not fulfill their commitment to controlling and containing the oil spill. The case became more complex and the news reporters were really pressing to know the truth of the matter from the executive (Scherer, 2012). This made the then executive officer Hermiller to employ an undercover operative to investigate who could have leaked the documents to the news reporters and the congress. His aim was to catch the whistleblower and be able to deal with him or her. There was a questionable ethical and illegal occurrence after this exposure because Hermiller suspected a former congressional aide and oil broker, Chuck Hamel; Alyeska hired a security company from South Florida to catch Hamel. This was done by stealing Hamel’s trash and bugging his office to try to get him as the whistleblower, they also hired a beautiful blonde who pretended to be an environmentalist so as to get him to confess (Prologue. n.d.).

This was the most unethical way that the Exxon; partner to BP used to get to know their leaker. Using women as an object to make Hamel confess that he was the leaker; that he was the person behind exposing the company’s documents of how they had failed to keep their promise of containing their oil spill (The BP oil spill, n.d.). It was also illegal to bug the office he was using and to steal his trash just in the aim of covering their dirty and illegal acts. Everybody’s privacy should be respected and not interfered with in any place of work (Robyn, 2011). The executive, Hermiller wanted to cover his tracks by getting the leaker and may be getting rid of them or even worse by trying all the unethical approaches that he could afford. For this beautiful blonde to agree to act as an environmentalist so as to seduce Hamel and make him talk or disclose that he had leaked the information to the public they must have bribed her or given a very large amount of money or even promised her several other things (Moreno, 2011). BP has been featured in all these incidences and therefore the news reporters and media were onto it which made it appear on the news frequently.

Ethical dilemmas which in other words could be known as moral dilemmas are events where one has to make choices between two options which do not even resolve the situation in an ethical manner; this means that if one chooses one situation he or she has to transgress the other choice (Garsten & Hernes, 2011). Ethical dilemmas give an assumption that the one choosing will be bound by societal norms for example religious teachings or codes of law so as to be able to make the ethical choice impossible (DiMauro & Grant, 2013). The dilemma in the case of BP is that; should they protect their reputation or should they give in to the accusations that have been brought forward by the exposure. They decide to transgress their exposure by trying to protect their reputation by trying to look for the mole or the leaker of the documents.

There was also an ethical question after the largest oil spill in the history of the United States on the Deepwater Horizon drilling that blew the Gulf of Mexico to at least 40 miles Southeast of Louisiana coastline (Robyn, 2011). According to the company, the oil spill did not cause very large impacts on the wildlife and the company itself. The government and the BP official denied the members of the press (reporters) and independent scientists who had requested to set up some instruments on the bottom of the ocean that was supposed to measure the accurate rate of leak access to the oil spill site. This is evidence in that a reporter was threatened with arrest by the US coastguard for the attempt to view and have an access to the oil spill site. The BP spokesman made it clear that they were not going to measure further the rate of the leak terming it as irrelevant. The bigger question was how was it to be cleaned up if they did not measure the flow? The government was supposed to allow the public to see the destruction the oil spill had caused to the environment (Scherer, 2012). This is because it was there were animals in the ocean that were affected and died due to the spill. So many marine animals died and their bodies decayed in the waters and this could have been the biggest reason as to why they did not let people near the site.

Whistleblower

This an individual who take the initiative to leak or expose some information, persons or activities that may seem not right, illegal, unethical or not correct within an organization or a company for that matter either a public or a private organization (Berlatsky, 2012). The wrong information could a violation of the laws, rules, and regulations of a company, fraud, and corruption, or even threat to the public interest or national security. The leaker or the whistleblower could opt to bring the information either internally or externally. Internally in that he or she could tell other people in the organization or his superiors. Externally the whistleblower could leak the information or expose the company to the media and news reporters, government or even law enforcement bodies. In this case, BP oil was exposed externally to the news reporters who made it public on the television and newspapers (Berlatsky, 2012). The documents were handed over to the reporters, therefore, exposing the company of their negligence to fulfilling their promises. Whistleblowers play a vital part in making sure that what is not happening right in an organization has been exposed and thereafter rectified. BP oil has not only been exposed by whistleblowers but also its negligence and violations have very bad results like deaths and visible repercussions. Though the whistleblower in the case of Exxon helped expose very important that made the company look at their weakness and be able to keep their promises and since then there have been fewer cases of oil spills and explosions.

The company’s exposure caused the company so much loss from the fines and the probation by the court. The employees in the company were scrutinized and some lost their jobs in the attempt of finding their whistleblowers. This means that anyone that was suspected to be the whistleblower was investigated or their offices were bugged which would have made them uncomfortable and some of the after realizing this quit their job, the company was therefore left with a shortage of employees due to this (Scherer, 2012). The company’s reputation was shuttered due to the documents that reviewed their fouls. The company’s employment has not been explained into details by any books but it does state that their employees have suffered a lot of unfortunate circumstances and therefore need to add more employees and find a way to compensate those were affected.

The company did not use any marketing relations but public relations. This is because after the exposure Hermiller hired a security company to investigate and know who the leaker was so that he could talk and maybe say that the documents were fake and that he or she has given the news reporters the wrong documents. He went to the extent of hiring a fake environmentalist to seduce Hamel so that he could talk. He was ready to do anything to get the whistleblower so as to clear the company’s name from being viewed badly by the public to being the good company it wanted to be seen by the public. Mr. Hermiller hired an undercover operative who set a phony environmental law firm and tried to talk Hamel into using it so as to pursue public interest lawsuit against Alyeska and Exxon (Robyn, 2011). BP is among the largest oil and gas companies in the world, therefore, it has marketed itself all over the world and using its marketing skills and relations would not have helped much like it would by using the public relations. This means that it was wise to repair the damage caused by the reported misconducts, for example, the reports that the employees have suffered some diseases like respiratory systems and the documents released to the news reporters. The only way to repair the damage was to make the public believe that there were not such issues in the BP oil.

In conclusion, BP oil has been successful and as well it has had its setbacks. The oil spill has been the worst record that the company had ever encountered and it cost the company so much fine. Nevertheless, despites the company trying so much to be at its best there have been so many ethical questions and problems that it has been accused of but it has still been able to stand out among the largest oil and gas companies.

References

Berlatsky, N. (2012). Whistleblowers. Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press.

DiMauro, L., & Grant, T. (2013). Ethics. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

A., & Sharples, R. W. (2010). Ethical problems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.

Exxon Valdez to Deepwater Horizon: Protecting victims of major oil spills: Hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, July 27, 2010. (2011). Washington: U.S. G.P.O.

Garsten, C., & Hernes, T. (2011). Ethical dilemmas in management. London: Routledge.

Moreno, M. C. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: Pressures on leaders to walk the talk.

Prologue. (n.d.). Oil in the Environment Legacies and Lessons of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Xxii-Xxvii. doi:10.1017/cbo9781139225335.003

Robyn, E. (2011). The BP oil spill: An analysis of BP's communication in the 2010 environmental crisis. Antwerpen.

Scherer, L. S. (2012). The BP oil spill. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press.

The BP oil spill: Human exposure and environmental fate: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, June 10, 2010. (n.d.).