BP CEO Tony Hayward said he would just like to get his life back. You know, I say give
him life plus 20.
—JAY LENO
While much ethics is indeed about individual behavior, the best even of that has
considered individuals as they are situated in various nested relationships such as family,
nation, class, gender, and humanity. Any rules for individuals that ignore context and
situation are probably well ignored.
—HENRY SHUE
One of the largest oil companies in the world, BP (formerly British Petroleum) is a multinational
corporation headquartered in London. It has subsidiaries worldwide, including
two in North America. BP possesses drilling rights in the Macondo Prospect, off the
coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. In order to access the crude oil there, BP leased
a rig from Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling company. With more than
26,000 employees and a fleet of 136 vessels, Transocean operates in some 30 countries.
BP also hired Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services company, to cement and
seal off the well once drilling was complete. Halliburton employs more than 50,000 people
and provides services in 70 countries.
While all three of these mega-firms would play a part in this scenario, it was BP’s
responsibility to address safety. And safety was certainly at risk. In recent years, as the
world’s appetite for oil has grown and as the political complexities of obtaining it in
the Middle East have increased, companies like BP have been focusing on new sites and
new technologies for oil extraction. Since the 1990s, they have been exploring deep sea
drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. Deepwater drilling in the Gulf is particularly
hazardous due to the high-pressure mix of oil and natural gas trapped in pockets
within a twisted landscape of salt on the seabed. Huge bubbles of gas can move suddenly
to the surface with volcanic force. According to geophysicist Roger Anderson of Columbia
University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, many of the ultra-deep wells in the
Gulf of Mexico are full of natural gas; the dangerous bubbles that come up the pipes are
called “kicks.” Anytime a company enters a new deposit, he says, “it’s unknown what
you’re going to find.” 8
So BP had to consider the risk of a “blowout,” a destructive gusher of oil and/or
natural gas. Industry-wide, the most commonly used safety device is a valve called a
“blow-out preventer” (BOP). Located on the sea floor, it is designed to pinch through
the well pipe to cut off any leak. BOPs, operated manually or automatically through a
system of sensors, are not fool-proof, however. They can fail in extreme weather conditions,
and they can clog during the cementing of a well or during an explosion.
BP could have installed a so-called “acoustic cut-off switch,” which would activate
the BOP remotely in case the rig was damaged or destroyed. Although these switches
were legally required in Norway and Brazil, they were not mandated in the United States.
In fact, for a decade, while U.S. lawmakers considered this safety option, BP had been
lobbying hard against any such regulation, arguing that acoustic switches were too
expensive—$500,000 each—and would sometimes cause unnecessary shut-downs. These
would be costly too: BP’s rental rate for Transocean’s rig, for instance, was about
$500,000 per day.
8 Faye Flam, “The Dangers of Deep-Sea Oil Drilling,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 7, 2010.