There was an explosion in the Deepwater Horizon on April 2010. The Transocean and BP tried to contain the fire while assessing the available options. Transocean owned and staffed the Deepwater Horizon while the BP Company leased and carried out supervision of the rig ( Allen &D’Elia, 2015) . The BP also was the principal owners of the Macondo oil well. The oil well was damaged by the explosion, and this led to leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The leakage continued for 87 days until a solution was found but the damage was significant both economically and environmentally. The oil leakage contaminated the waters and the shorelines. Following the spill, a federal joint was formed to assess the causes of the oil spill. The central joint found out that BP, Transocean and Halliburton and the contractor shared the responsibility for this explosion and the damages( Allen &D’Elia, 2015) . However, BP was highly held responsible for the leaks.
The BP Company has a history of misconduct. There are several cases of their fault, for example, the violation of the health and safety that led to an explosion in Texas refinery and the fire in Ohio refinery. According to APA, the unethical breach by BP, in this case, is based on the violation of Principle A, B, C, D and E where principle A where intentional decisions by the management causes harm that disregard the safety regulations ( Mills&Koliba, 2015 ). Before the leaks, there were warning in the rig, but the company ignored the warnings. Principle B, the company disregarded responsibility to the citizens and society of the United States, and it did not try and create trust with the partners like Pascal. Since the explosion, the company has not taken responsibility for their actions and has not attempted to manage conflict of interest. Principle C: integrity, BP provides a misleading and manipulated report on the cause of the incidents, and this shows lack of integrity by the company. Principle D that deals with justice, the company was not fair in dealing with the employees that escalated the issue. Somme employees lost their jobs with others facing a career end following “blacklist” by BP ( Mills&Koliba, 2015 ). Principle E that advocates for respecting the dignity and right of people; following the impact of the disasters on many employees and citizens of the United States, showed that the organization did not show any concerns on the rights of these people. The disaster caused a lot of ipact to citizens and employees but the organization did not show concern for their rights( Mills&Koliba, 2015 ).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The actions of BP were against standards that regulate the company operations. The rules violated are; Standard 2.01 that states individuals should act within their competence (APA, 2010). The organization did not follow this standard through assigning employees to positions that were critical for unqualified employees. Standard 3.04 (APA, 2010) calls for professionals to take relevant actions to prevent harm to their colleagues. It is clear that BP did not show concern for their employees’ safety. Standard 3.06 that addresses the problems caused by conflict of interest in an organization; when the company assigned the vice president of security to report to the person in charge of profit. This creates competition between safety and benefit and the latter wins. Standard 5.01 and 6.02 pays attention to the misleading and manipulated information that BP provided to the government agencies(APA, 2010).
The organization should follow the code of ethics like the use of liner and 21 centralizers in operation and perform cement bond log. The action is costly regarding money and time but it gives high safety option, and this would help prevent tragedy. BP should have used external auditing and have a whistleblowing line for employees to file any allegations against their company anonymously ( Beever&Hess, 2016). In so doing, employees become more outspoken with no worry of their employment. The external auditing will be more objective in assessing the problem. The company should also improve their safety culture. This is achieved by ensuring that critical equipment is in a good state and the old ones are eradicated or upgraded through monitoring. The government should set regulations that place the safety and health of the citizens first. The government also needs to establish controls that are tighter on oil companies to prevent the repeat occurrence( Beever&Hess, 2016) .The workers, in this case, had the responsibility to report the safety issues and even stop working in case their grievances were unheard. The workers in BP should have persistent to the management on the accident the practice was bound to cause. Workers instead placed their interest over the lives of public and marine.
References
Allen, P. D., &D’Elia, C. F. (2015). What lies beneath: the BP oil spill and the need for new response models. Current Psychology , 34 (3), 587-596.
American Psychological Association. (2010, June 1). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct: Including 2010 amendments .Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/ (Links to an external site.)
Beever, J., & Hess, J. L. (2016). Deepwater Horizon oil spill: An ethics case study in environmental engineering. American Society for Engineering Education.
Essays, UK. (November 2013). Ethical Problems Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Management Essay. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/ethical-problems-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-management-essay.php?vref=1
Mills, R. W., &Koliba, C. J. (2015). The challenge of accountability in complex regulatory networks: The case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Regulation & Governance , 9 (1), 77-91.
