Sep 05 2012
BP Business Ethics Questioned
In April 2010, an explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and caused the largest offshore oil spill in US history. Now, years later, the company is being sued for millions of dollars by institutional investors, claiming the company misled them about their safety policies and the scale of the spill. The investors lost substantial sums in their investments and allege that they would not have bought their shares at the price they did if they were not misled about the companies safety first policies. According to these investors, after the spill, BP also released statements assuring investors that the spill was limited and containable, which was later found to be false. They feel BP “acted in reckless disregard of the truth, ignoring and concealing indications that the disaster was much larger than investors were being led to believe.” This evidence leads me to believe that BP acted unethically and as a result should pay damages to their investors. At the same time, it is hard to argue this point because oil rigs are particularly risky to invest in, but the fact of the matter is, if the investors were truly misled and/or lied to, then the company is in a breach of ethics and should be penalized.