Ethical Issues With The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Essay.

Discuss about the Problem with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. What are the Ethical Issues involved?

The environment of the global business in the 21st century is very complex. Ethical issues are found in all kinds of business companies irrespective their sizes. The business organisation develops ethics & codes of conducts so that the employees of the organisation will follow them and act accordingly.  The most important complex ethical issues faced by the business organisations are decision making, compliance & governance and the diverse cultures.

Ethical dilemmas & the identification of the ethical based course of action are the important concern of the business organisations to prepare a framework for the ethical decision making. The recognition of the ethical issue, getting the facts, evaluation of the alternative course of action is the most important activities of the business organisations before making a decision & test its reliability. The focus of the ethical decision making follows a process that will protect the employees of the organisation and will ensure that the entire operations of the organisation are conducted in a fair & just manner ( Parker & Evans, 2014).  The ethical decision making also ensures that the values & beliefs of the individual employees of the organisation are protected.

Discrimination in the male dominated environment of the organisation is ordinarily found. A new female employee faces difficulty and sometimes complains against the inappropriate behaviour of the male employees. In this context, the management of the business organisation plans to organise training on sensitivity. Sometimes the management plans to move the female employee to a different location so that she will not be treated differently. In fact treating the female employee of the organisation differently is treated as the discrimination & based on unethical conduct.

Utilitarian ethics always does good for the employees of the organisation and limits the harm of the employees.  The moral rights of the employees of the organisation are respected and protected by the correct approach of the ethical standard. In the process of the decision making, the just approach of the decision maker creates equality among all the employees. The ethical decision making focuses on promoting employees of the organisation (Vitez, 2017).

The ethical decision making promotes the organisation as a whole.  The decision-making process of the organisation fails when the individual profit is considered. The lack of ethical decision making enhances individual benefits and these lead to the lawful liabilities for the organisation. 

Discrimination

The problem with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is considered as one of the most important ethical dilemmas that have been faced by the petroleum industry in the current time.  The oil spill happened in the year 2010 and it continued for three months (Rubia, 2010). The oil spill occurred due to the release of the gas followed by the explosion that caused eleven lives & seventeen injuries. This caused a fearful impact on the environment and polluted the land & seas.

The ethical issues related to the incident are related to the negligence of the management to take care of the safety issues in the Gulf coast and avoiding the warnings & the problems raised by various reports. The reports also focus that the oil spill is due to the decline in the performance & quality ( Malik, 2010). The pleas of the employees related to the potential risks were neglected by the management of the organisation and the data on the risks were considered as the fake data. The entire situation reveals that there were safety issues and the ethical dilemmas are related to the huge failure of the maintaining the integrity of the system that was required to be maintained in the workplace of the organisation (ABERNETHY, 2010).

The series of accidents brought a decline in the reputations of the company. The effects of the accidents on the environment & the human rights have been proved unethical. In 2005, the accident in Texas City caused the death of the fifteen workers and 180 injuries. The investigation on the accident indicates that the cost cutting approach & high production caused a decline in the safety regulations of the refinery. The company failed to clean the pipeline as per the law. The poor ethical decisions & failure of the management by the executives of BP caused to pay a huge fine.

The disaster could have been avoided by controlling offshore drilling. The company was required to prepare for the product disaster so that it would get the permission for the offshore operation.  The company crafted poor plans and the plans were nonspecific and the plans were also based on the false information.

The faults in the internal & external regulations and the failure of the philosophy of management to reduce to cost and taking risk brought the explosion in the Deepwater Horizon and that caused gas leak subsequently.  The explosion on 20th of April, 2010 at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Gulf of Mexico caused the death of eleven workers. This created a huge oil spill five thousand below the surface and it had continued for eighty-seven days (Barron, 2012).  It was the worst marine spill that spread around six hundred miles of the coastline.  This caused the death of 1000s birds, fish & marine animals. This invaded wetlands & marshes. The estimation made on the loss indicated that around fifty-three thousand barrels of oil were leaked per day.

Failures of BP

The responsibility of oil leak was also owned by Transocean that was given the charge of Deepwater Horizon (Colwell, 2014).  Halliburton was given the responsibility of cementing the procedure.  The failure of these two companies to perform their tasks was also one of the reasons for the oil spill.  The attempts by the engineers for capping the leaks became successful on fifteenth of July and on September 19th the well was sealed officially.  With the joint efforts of BP, the Coast Guard, MMS & the volunteers groups the entire containment & cleanup were made. In Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi & Florida command posts of the incidents were created in order to oversee the containment of the offshore & the response of the onshore.  There were installations of the marine protection booms (Susskind, 2015). In order to stop the spread of the oil, ships & aircraft were used. The company also trained people to help in the cleanup area and the programme was named as Vessels of Opportunity programme.

The damage caused for the unethical management directive impacted on the organisation. The organisation wanted to control the information about the effects. The company issued press releases so that it can motivate people (Kroh & Conathon, 2012).The company depicted that it supports to Transocean after drilling rig fire. The company through its press release wanted to prove that Transocean is responsible for the oil spill and now BP will help it to work for consolidating the situation. In other press releases, the company informed about the progress of the cleanup movement & the grants of twenty-five million dollars to the coastal states (Safina, 2011).  The company also made an unethical work by forcing the workers & volunteers to sign the confidential clauses.

Theories on the corporate responsibilities of Thomas Donaldson focus on three conditions that govern the fundamental international rights. These conditions are:

1. The right that protects subject of extreme significance
2. This should be subject to importance
3. The burden of it is affordable economically.

The ownership of the property right, right to enjoy & use the natural resources & the right to survival are the fundamental international rights that are violated by the oil spill at Deepwater Horizon. The spill brought huge loss to the marine life and caused eight thousand birds death and deform of the seafood.  The fishing industry suffered a lot due to the collapse of commercial & recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. The tourism industry, restaurant owners were affected by the explosion (Juhasz, 2011).

The duties of the states, individuals & the multinational companies are to avoid depriving, protect from depriving & assist the deprived. The duty of the corporations is to help the deprived. All the companies remain failed to protect from the deprivation. BP could do nothing to help the tourism sector and the fishing industry that faced huge loss due to the oil spill (Petrolia, 2015). The attempt of BP to aid the deprived was too late. BP and other related companies took many wrong decisions that violated the ethical responsibilities of the company.   

Conclusion

The devastating explosion at Deepwater Horizon occurred due to the missteps taken by BP, Transocean, Halliburton & the MMS. The companies neglected their responsibilities & acted in an unethical way. The decision of the management of the company was poor and unethical. There was a need of reformation of the relationship between the oil industry & the officials of the government.  The conflict of interest within the organisation of MMS needed to be eliminated. The implementation of the new rules is required to be made in order to avoid such a disaster in the future days. The individual companies require following the regulations of safety & risk-management so that it will prevent the society to face any harm in future.

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