Bp Ethical Issues

1. Originally, an Ethics and Compliance team was formed to monitor the formation and operation of the company guidance towards ethical issues in BP’s company. Just like to set up a communication consistent standard for all the employees of BP for different location, culture and language. Originally, this is a good way to guide the company staff to maintain company standard and reputation. But the code did not effectively address specific high-risk activities for the scope of daily operations. It was quite reasonable because at the very beginning stage of drafting the related guidelines, not every experience or assumed circumstancs were fully considered in the daily operations. Unfortunately, after the spill happened, several reports have pointed out that BP 's internal problems were the main causes of the disaster. In 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had put a record largest fine of $87 million upon BP’s company. In the investigation, the OSHA has issued as many as 271 notifications to BP’s company. The notifications were mainly dealing with a series of misconducts which BP’s company performed in the 2005 Texas refinery explosion hazard.

Moreover, BP’s company improper management and lack of adequate safety precautions were once again been found in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill at Mexico in 2010. Millions of gallons of oil were discharged into the Gulf of Mexico in this incident. The nearby environment was highly deteriorated and many precious lives had lost. On 5 January 2011, a report has been issued by the White House oil spill commission, it pointed out that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean had helped to trigger the explosion, in order to minimize the working cost of the operation. Regardless of the intention of BP’s company towards the disaster, the actions taken by the company had undoubtedly increased the risk of the explosion. The report also blamed the BP’s company for not adopting enough measurements or tests to evaluate the