英国石油公司漏油事件分析 BP oil spill Essay
BP全称为英国煤油产品。它是世界上最大的石油及天燃气公司，其总部设立在伦敦。BP是最初的公司是1909年的Anglo-Persian石油公司，在1954年更改为英国煤油公司。它被重新组合与改造成现面的英国煤油公司，美国石油公司与大西洋石油公司。BP公司将会涉及到更多的领域包括石油及天燃气，替代燃料与其他生意，并且太阳能系列将更加普遍，发展速度也会加快。自从1981年以来，BP公司已充立了12家分支机构领域涉及矿产，食品，船业，国际金融，国际洗涤产品，它的生意已经遍布世界上超过一百多个国家。BP有将近一百一十万员工遍布世界上各个国家。在2003年，BP在财富杂志已被列为世界上第一家全球500强企业。
BP’s full name is British Petroleum. It is one of the world’s largest oil and gas company which has its headquarter in London, England. The initial name of BP is the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909; in 1954 it changed to its present name British Petroleum. It is combined and reconstructed by the former British Petroleum, Amoco and ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company). BP’s business has spread to many fields including oil and natural gas, alternative fuels, the production of petroleum based product, aviation fuels and its business about the solar electric power generation is also growing very fast. Since 1981, BP has set up 12 branch companies successively in many fields such as mineral, food, ship, international finance, international detergent with its business spread to more than a hundred countries all over the world. BP has nearly 110,000 employees work all over the world. In 2003, BP is ranked on the FORTUNE as the first five global top 500 companies.
Deepwater horizon oil spill and deepwater horizon explosion
On 20th April, 2010, the Gulf of Mexico suffered a lot from a great catastrophe of oil spill. The drilling platform of the British Petroleum Corporation exploded in the deepwater horizon in the Gulf of Mexico which led to 11 workers death and very severe environment pollution. This event is regarded as the most severe oil spill incident in the history of America.。
Many people are curious about this catastrophe and people did not know what cause it and what actions would BP take. According to the inspection report BP made on 8th September, BP thought this catastrophe is not only BP’s fault, the research report has testified that many parts and companies should also bear responsibilities of course including BP itself.
The report said that the workers of Transocean did not recognize the danger signs at first. BP also criticized about the cementing of oil well which is bore by the Halliburton Company. At the same time, BP admitted that the workers of Transocean as well as itself did not recognize the test result of the safety about the oil well though the result had showed the oil well is in danger. But Transocean said that BP tries to hide the key factor of this oil spill accident. It thinks that the key factor led to that accident is BP’s deadly defect in its oil well designs. BP made a series of decisions on the oil well design and constructed with the consideration of reducing costs which added risks. As to Halliburton, it said all the works involving in the building of oil wells it did were according to BP’s stipulation.
According to a group of scientists’ research, they found “the propane and ethane were the primary drivers of microbial respiration, accounting for up to 70%of the observed oxygen depletion in fresh plumes.” (David L. Valentine et al., 2010) ①
BP is the representative of British virtual industry，it plays a very important role in keeping the international status of England and taking part in the global resource allocation. “A TNC is a company that owns assets and has direct business activities in many countries.” (Grazia Letto-Gillies, 2005)② As such an influential transnational corporation, BP’s many significant changes will influence many parts in the world. Of course, it can have good influence as well as bring disasters. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can show its bad effect in many aspects.
First, this oil spill incident’s effect on its company, the incident has led to a great loss of BP, BP lost a lot in the spilled oil, was fined to pay a large amount of compensation payment. Besides these, due to this incident, BP’s stock price also suffered, this in long turn will also lead to the reduction and shrinkage of its market share as well as its reputation as one of the world’s largest oil company. Second，the incident also impact the shareholders and distributors of BP a lot. “Transnational corporations are public companies that are owned by shareholders who in turn have a degree of power over corporate policies.” (John Madeley, 1999 ) ③Many shareholders lost a lot due to this. The oil spill harm the interest of many distributors in America which dealing in the brand oil of BP and it in turn affected BP’s business in the united states.
The biggest victim in this incident without any doubt is the Gulf of Mexico; the oil spill has destroyed the ecological environment and people’s daily life and health situation around that area. “The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses direct threats to human health from inhalation or dermal contact with the oil and dispersant chemicals, and indirect threats to seafood safety and mental health.” (Gina M. Solomon ﹠Sara Janssen, 2010) ④ At there, the spill oil spread quickly to nearby places, the environment was so severely destroyed and polluted; it will take tens of years to recover.
Animals at there led a miserable life and many died because of the spilled oil. The Gulf of Mexico will be a waste sea in the following years which will also lead to a great economic loss. The oil spill incident affected local economy a lot. The oil industry, fishery, touring, transportation will all suffered from this incident.
The oil spill will not only influence the economy but also politics. Economy and politics influence each other, “ although no one government can fully dictate the international environment, some national policies affect the international economy in important ways.”(Robert Owen Keohane and Helen V. Milner, 1996) ⑤ In turn, economy will also influence politics. In fact, for the oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico, in the territory of the United States, this made the incident became a controversy issue in both countries’ politic. Confronted with the great domestic political pressure, President Obama carried out new policies and had conference with the BP chairman Carl Henric Svanberg on things involved in the oil spill incident. Prime Minister David Cameron showed his pity and attention to the damage the oil spill incident made to environment. Before this, the prime minister showed that the British government would help BP to solve this problem as soon as possible and it suggested that BP should take its responsibilities toward this disaster.
“Public campaigning strives first to create a momentum of public concern and commitment.” (Christian Lahusen, 1996) ⑥As the oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico became the largest environmental catastrophe in the history of America, since 3rd June, 2010, citizens from more than 50 cities started the protest activity against BP. Apart from the protest activities in America, thousands of fish men, seafood manufacture and the touring companies also held protest activities. In protesting, the media enlarged the influence of this incident. “Most radio stations mixed entertainment, culture and public service.” (Shirley Biagi, 2007) ⑦ In BP’s such accident, media also keep the news spreading, like BBC. The protesting activities affected the market share of BP indirectly and also led to the devaluation of BP’s brand image. These activities required BP take actions in recovering the environment and relative legal responsibilities and compensate the loss people and industries suffered.
As BP’s deep water development of oil and gas is very advanced in the globe, so when such a great company has accidents in oil well and can not manage it well, it will no affect the industry of that line and people may doubt about that line. Dramatically, the exploded drilling platform of this accident is the one just won the title of the world’s deepest oil well last year, and for a long time BP has been proud of its capacity in deep water drilling. The impact of oil spill on the oil production and distribution line showed in the actions took by governments such as the United States have taken measures for its energy safety.
When the environmental catastrophe happened, BP became the attack subject of many countries and industries. In fact, BP has tried a lot to minimize its economic loss and recover the environment. The impact of this incident also has spread from business to politic area. As a global company, BP has showed to many other global countries the difficulty and threat they may confront when such big and destructive incident happens. So it is more reasonable and sensible for them to think over the actions they should take such as improving its techniques, paying more attention to the supervision, taking effective measures as quickly as possible to avoid such tragedy or minimize the loss when it happens.
One thing we have to admit is that BP did take measures to prevent the oil spill continually as soon as the accident happened. When BP got the news of the accident, it built steel and concrete shade to collect the spilled oil and avoid oil keeping spilling as well as set up protective belt along the coast to avoid the pollution keeping spreading. BP keeps trying and finding new and advanced techniques to deal with this problem. A quite good and effective way is to build relief wells in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico but which will take a long time to realize. BP has decided to spend a large number of money to solve this problem.
The international business environment includes business activities that are affected by international conditions and events.” ( Roger E. Meiners et al., 2009) ⑧。
Apart from keeping the oil stop spilling, other recovery actions took by BP include setting up compensation fund, BP has took its legal responsibility to compensate the loss it led to the parties and industries involved in this catastrophe. “Hydrogen is the ideal fuel from an ecological viewpoint.” (Ronald Dell and David Anthony James Rand, 2004) ⑨ BP also said they will spend large sums of money and a lot of time to find alternative, clean and green energy such as solar power (it has been researched and put into use successfully), wind power, hydrogen and other resources. But if these actions are enough, we are doubted about that. Since before this oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has a series of bad records such as the Sea Gem offshore oil rig disaster in 1965 which killed 13 crews; the Texas City Refinery explosion in 2005 which causing 15 people’s death and also damaged the environment a lot. So from this, we can see, BP had experienced such things, but they are still happening and keeping destroying the environment as well as threat workers’ life. From this point, BP may review itself why can not stop such disaster. From another point, it is because, BP still did not pay due attention to such case or the technology to prevent such thing is not enough and there are still a lot for BP to do. It should take more measures to compensate the loss it made to the economy in that area and protect the marine life, providing them a safer and clean environment.
“Globalization provides opportunities beyond domestic markets and allows for a greater degree of economies of scale in production and sales potential.” (Anwar, Sajid, 2002) ⑩As for BP, it occupies a big market share in other countries such as the United States, Russia as well as in its own country the United Kingdom. As an international company, it is quite good to spread its business overseas to earn a larger profit. But there are also some disadvantages for such a big international company to doing business in other countries. Take BP for example, when the oil spill incident happened, it will also lead to the change of the relationship between countries.
“Many aspects of globalization are indeed intentional and reflexive, including both the increasing level of business planning for global marketing and action by the environmentalist movement” (Malcolm Waters, 2001) ⑾。
Oil is a kind of strategic resource which means a lot to a country’s life and development. “ The oil industry differs from most other types of international business because of the level of control exercised by governments.” (Jill Shankleman, 2006)⑿Now countries have shifted their focus on the control and occupation of important resources such as oil. As one of the world’s largest global oil company, BP’s role can not be ignored. From the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we can see the role of globalization played in the business of global company. Nowadays, the process of globalization is keeping growing very fast. In the competition of economic globalization, big international companies have very important status thorough the communication of technology and information. Nowadays, international companies has occupied large portion of the production and international trade, they are more influential than ever before in world’s development and welfare. “Globalization has made it possible for knowledge created in one part of the world to become available everywhere due to the low cost and speed of communication and the spread of literacy and education” (D. Gale Johnson, 2002) ⒀ But from the deepwater oil explosion, we can see no optimistic answer to the question that if the international companies have realized their duties and obligations. BP cost a lot in this catastrophe and disasters before, but each time it will seek for security. We can not deny that many international companies trying to escape from the disaster it make to the environment. “Corporate social responsibility is about the commitment of enterprises to society.” (Peter Pruzan, 2009) ⒁。
When considering the corporate governance of international business, “A dogmatic and uncompromising belief in the supremacy of economic rationality and a unidirectional approach to addressing societal issues would necessarily require coercive action and ultimately lead to unintended negative consequences.” (S. Prakash Sethi, 2009) ⒂Before extracting oil，BP did not fully assess the environment risks and during the extract, in order to reduce cost, BP use low quality materials which led to the final disaster. BP did not have a good corporation with the American regulatory authority, for after the accident happened, the department did not inspect the oil well carefully and the government did not have an emergency response plan. So this tell us that when a international company especially companies dealing with the high environmental risk enterprises，it should pay enough attention to the protection of environment; The government should carry out acts to bind and supervise enterprise effectively. Only through these, the company can realize win-win, i.e., the increase of its profit and the protection of environment.
Reference：
① David L. Valentine et al., 2010，Propane Respiration Jump-Starts Microbial Response to a Deep Oil Spill，Science 8 October 2010: Vol. 330. no. 6001, pp. 208 – 211
② Grazia Letto-Gillies, 2005, Transnational corporations and international production: concepts, theories and effects, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited,
③ John Madeley, 1999, Big business, poor peoples: the impact of transnational corporations on the world’s poor, Zed Books Ltd.
④ Gina M. Solomon ﹠Sara Janssen, 2010, Health effects of the gulf oil spill JAMA, published online
⑤ Robert Owen Keohane and Helen V. Milner, 1996, Internationalization and domestic politics, Cambridge university press
⑥ Christian Lahusen, 1996, The rhetoric of moral protest, Walter de Gruyter www.ukthesis.org/thesis_sample/guanlileizuoye/3970.html
⑦ Shirley Biagi, 2007, Media/ impact: an introduction to mass media, Thomson Wodsworth, p111
⑧ Roger E. Meiners et al., 2009,The legal environment of business, 10th edition, South-Western Cengage Learning, p555
⑨ Ronald Dell and David Anthony James Rand, 2004, Clean energy, The Royal Society of Chemistry, p55
⑩ Anwar, Sajid, 2002,Globalization and national economic development：analyzing benefits and costs, October 1 2002, Journal of Business and Management
? Malcolm Waters, 2001) Globalization, 2nd edition, Routledge, New York, America.
? Jill Shankleman, 2006, Oil, profits, and peace: does business have a role in peacemaking, United States Institute of Peace
? D. Gale Johnson, 2002) Globalization: what it is and who benefits, Journal of Asian Economics, Vol.13, p427
? Peter Pruzan, 2009, Rational, ethical and spiritual perspectives on leadership: Selected writings, International Academic Publishers, Germany
? S. Prakash Sethi, 2009, Globalization and the good corporation, journal of business ethics, 87:1-2,
