Legal and Ethical Issues Related to BP Oil Spill (Essay Sample)

Analysis of the Legal and Ethical Issues related to BP Oil Spill
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date
Analysis of the Legal and Ethical Issues related to BP Oil Spill
On April 20, 2010, a disaster struck when BP’s Deep-water Horizon rig exploded. This incident led to the death of 11 workers while an estimate of 4.2 million barrels of oil spilt into the Gulf of Mexico (Schwartz, 2020). The financial and environmental results of this explosion made it the worse ecological disaster ever witnessed in the U.S.A. For BP, however, this was not their first ride. In 2005, the company was responsible for another explosion that led to the death of 30 people while injuring over 200 others (Schwartz, 2020). These incidences, therefore, raises a question on the ethical and legal status of BP’s operations.
Despite the company having up to 63 reported cases of reported misconduct since 1995 (Schwartz, 2020), they continued conducting their operations in total disregard for the ethical and legal guidelines. In most companies, ethics is guided by five main principles; these are truthfulness, responsibility, caring, citizenship, and moral right (Kačerauskas, 2019).BP, however,