On April 20th, 2010, a devastating oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico,52 miles south-east of Venice in Louisiana’s coast. It was considered as the world’s worst oil spill in human history.
One reason of the disaster was that cement that were used to protect the rig were not sealed properly. BP agreed but stated that they were not fully responsible for this as other companies such as the owner of the rig Transcoean, cement casing company Halliburton, and other firms were also in the wrong of this disaster. Most importantly, the progress of the Deepwater Horizon drill was well behind schedule and BP wanted to cut costs; hence the mis-judgement and disaster.
I believe the whole disaster was avoidable. In my opinion, it is understandable for businesses to find the most productive way to operate, but they should always consider possible dangerous consequences when making risky decisions. In this case, BP obviously did not think about the ethics behind cutting costs for the project. Reports by US Coast Guard and Ocean Energy Management stated that BP made seven out of nine decisions that cut their costs, obviously ignoring the environmental consequences that happened.