BP Oil Spill



BP Oil Spill

British Petroleum

British Petroleum Plc is a renowned global oil and gas company having a headquarter in London, United Kingdom. The company is ranked as the fourth-largest company in the world considered by revenues and is graded as the third-largest energy company in oil and gas sector. British Petroleum, also shortened as BP is one of the six oil and gas "super majors". The company is an active participant in all the aspects of oil and gas industry and is vertically-integrated. The main participation of the company includes refining, exploration and production, marketing, and distribution of petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It is also engaged in the main activities of renewing energy, including hydrogen, bio fuels, solar and wind power.

British Petroleum operates in more than 80 countries, possesses 400 service stations across the world and produces on an estimated of 3.8 million barrels of oil or its equivalent per day. BP America is the largest division of the company and is the biggest producer of oil and gas. This division is located in the United States and is headquartered in Houston, Texas. According to the statistics on 31 December 2010, British Petroleum had a total commercial reserves amounting to 18.07 billion barrels of oil or its equivalent. The company's former name, British Petroleum, has given derivation to "BP" from the initials of the company.

The track record of corporate social responsibility in BP and Shell has been diverse. There are various environmental and safety incidents that the company has been involved in and has also obtained criticism for its political influence. Later, in the year 1997, the company became the first major oil company to openly admit the necessity to take major steps against climate change. In the same year, British Petroleum established a target on the organizational level in order to lessen the emissions of greenhouse gases. Currently, BP invests more than $1 billion every year for the purpose of developing different energy sources that could be renewable, and has also planned to spend $8 billion on renewable during the period of 2005 and 2015 (Neha, 2010).

BP Oil Spill

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was the explosion of the oil rig Deepwater Horizon on 20th April 2010 and is one of the worst environmental disasters of this kind . A total of 800 million gallons of oil spill was witnessed from the hole in the Macondo oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil rig Deepwater Horizon, was operated on behalf of the company BP, after discharge of gas from the well exploded that killed eleven people. The internal documents of the BP groupshowed that the sealing of the well, despite warnings from experts realize a cost effective method with a greater risk of gas leakage.

Immediately after the sinking of the platform, a 1.5 km x 8 km wide oil slick was observed, that extended themselves after a few days on an area of 9900 square ...