BRITISH PETROLEUM GULF OIL SPILL

Do toxic wastes which are get dumped by petroleum industry affect its brand image: The Case of British Petroleum Gulf Oil Spill

Do toxic wastes which are get dumped by petroleum industry affect its brand image: The Case of British Petroleum Gulf Oil Spill

Chapter 1: Introduction

Hazardous waste means a waste considered dangerous to have intrinsic properties that present health risks. The hazardous properties are toxicity, flammability, chemical reactivity, corrosively, explosively, reactivity, radioactivity or other nature that causes damage to human health and the environment. Just as is the case with the rest of the issues of contamination of other toxic waste began to represent a vital issue during the period of the industrial revolution. Thus, for addressing how the toxic waste impacts on the brand images, in this study we have taken the case of British Petroleum (BP) Oil spill crises (Wang & Page 1999, 369-411). The study will focus in as how BP used the social media as the get aware of the response of public to this devastating 2010 Gulf oil Spill.

Aims of the study

The paper focuses on the oil spill and its issues that are emerging in the world.

The paper discloses about the facts emerging due to oil spill and how badly it is affecting the society

British Petroleum and Oil spill issues

The Environmental Impact of Oil spill and how it affects the brand image of the company

Steps taken by British Petroleum to overcome these issues

Research Question

The study discusses the following question:

The response of the public towards British Petroleum during and after the 2010 Gulf oil spill

What were the dominant image Restoration Strategy employed by the British Petroleum through using social media

What strategy BP has adopted to safe its brand image

Significance of the study

The worst accidental marine oil spill in history began on April 20, 2010 with an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean and leased by British Petroleum (BP). The rig was drilling for oil in the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana and, at the time of the accident a production casing was being installed by the Halliburton Energy Company. Oil drilling is an imperfect process and spills and leaks are not uncommon (Gundlach & Hayes, 1998, pp. 18-27).

As Humphrey, (2009), explained that however, a series of major spills and accidents in 1969 and 1970 led (in the short term) to greater government regulation of this industry. The first occurred in January 1969: a blowout on an oil platform in the Santa Barbara channel (California) released an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil over an 11-day period (Humphrey, 2009, pp 12-34). This was the largest offshore drilling accident in the United States until the Macondo blowout and drew national attention to the environmental dangers of offshore drilling. Serious accidents also occurred in February and December 1970 in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana ...