BPethics The British Petroleum (BP) oil spill is now as infamous as it is famous. At the time of the deep water oil rig explosion that killed eleven BP employees, media and environmentalists were calling the resulting oil spill "the greatest ecological disaster ever produced by the oil industry" (Balaguer, 2010, p. 6). While it is certainly true that the oil spill will have some long-term effects, it seems that most of the hype concerning the spill was completely overdone and very short-term in scope. From an ethical point-of-view, BP definitely made some missteps. From the moment of the explosion there should have been some immediate steps taken by BP that were not taken, or if they were taken, they were made rather late in the game. First, BP should have released the information to the victim's loved ones concerning their deaths immediately. Second, acknowledgement of the scope of the problem should have been made right up front, and third; steps should have been taken to ensure...

As one study recently espoused "one way to assess whether governments and industry (at any level) learn from their disaster experience is to examine two similar events at different points in time" (Sylves, Comfort, 2012, p. 76). The study then went on to compare the BP oil spill to the Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska. What the study determined was that some of the controlling methods used by government affected the manner in which BP was able to respond to the explosion. BP's response to the spill was hampered greatly by the fact that there were certain rules and regulation put into place after the Valdez spill that constrained response instead of enhancing response.
Ethically speaking, BP should have done a…