Introduction

It cannot be denied that life has been much better thanks to the increasing globalization and internationalization in many aspects; for example, labour mobility and flexibility; advanced technology, and highly competitive products and prices; that benefits consumers all over the world. However, multinational firms with profit-maximising and cost-minimisation objectives have raised ethical concerns, such as pollution, child labour, workers’ salary below minimum wage, over working hours, welfare discrimination, etc. This essay is going to discuss the recent case of “BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico” in 2010 that has got many attentions of countries and international actors including some INGOs and WTO. The US president Barrack Obama has compared the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to the September 11 terrorist attacks as he began a tour of the region:

"In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come”, said Obama (Telegraph, 2010).

We will use the four well-known moral frameworks discussed throughout the semester (utilitarianism, contractualism, ethics of virtue and deontology) to analyse why and how heavy the impact that disaster had on society under different points of view across international actors and the BP company itself.

I. The Facts

On April 20, 2010, the methane gas from the well, under high pressure, shot all the way up and out of the drill column, expanded onto the platform, and exploded. According to the global views, BP’s oil spill in Mexico was the biggest and the worst environmental disaster in the petroleum industry (even worse than 1989 Exxon Valdez Case). The explosion polluted hundreds of miles of coast, seriously affected local residents and communities and led to the worst disaster in US history. (BBC 2010) These risks of contamination and potential life-long health issues were the failure of an industry with a bad management and the ignorance of worker’s safety for organisation’s benefits. It also seriously affect to human’s happiness because of the hardy damaged environment for a company which took too much risk for gaining in profit for their own interests. Moreover, the case is also about BP’s pattern of ethically concerns and illegal behaviour.

The accident’s facts: * 60,000 barrels: the amount of oil a day is leaking into the Gulf - an estimated 2.5 million gallons. (Business Week) * 12,000: number of Louisiana residents who have filed for unemployment since the spill (Daily Finance) * $1.6 billion: the confirmed cost of the Gulf oil spill to BP, as of June 14, 2010 (Press Association) * $62 million: amount paid out in claims to 26,500 Gulf residents, as of June 14, 2010 (Press Association) * The National Wildlife Federation reports that already more than 150 threatened or endangered sea turtles are dead. And 316 sea birds, mostly brown pelicans and northern gannets, have been found dead along the Gulf Coast as a result of the spreading oil. * 130 miles long and 70 miles wide: Size of the oil slick as of May 17. The slick continues to grow and move. (New Orleans Times Picayune) * 11: Number of workers missing and presumed dead following the BP rig explosion. (Huffington Post) * A large number of fishermen are becoming seriously ill – and many of them believe that the chemicals that BP is using in the Gulf are to blame. (Beth Buczynski, 2010)

II. BP’s Point of View with reference to Deontology

Kant’s formulation is summarized in what we call the categorical imperative: act so as your maxima (the principle informing your action) is a universal law … This is so because a rational being has only itself as the measure of its action for no other reason because it is the only existing being that has dignity; i.e. that it is an End in itself and not a means for someone or something else. So when one acts as one’s principles are a universal law, one treats other rational beings in the same way as one wishes to be treated as an end and not as a mean.

In other words, deontology theory formed by Kant judges a person’s actions and intentions to fulfill a duty no matter what the consequences; i.e. only intension that should be taken into account. According to this framework, if an action had positive intentions, it would be morally relevant regardless of the consequences.
Since deontology evaluates the morality of an action from the intention, what BP did is not entirely immoral according to Kant. To support this idea, it is essential to split the disaster into two types of actions to determine morality: (1) oil spill and (2) the company’s attempts to clean-up after the disaster. Because BP did not have intention for the drilling rig to explode leading to that oil spill disaster, and consequences according to Kant are treated irrelevant, the action would not be considered immoral. I.e. BP cannot be judged immoral as it did not want to flood the gulf with oil on any purposes. Nevertheless the action can not be said to be moral since there was no positive intention associated with the action of BP. Therefore, from the perspective of Kant’s moral framework, BP’s oil spill is not judged moral nor immoral. However, Kant would probably consider BP’s leadership in clean-up attempts moral actions since the company did put a lot of effort in fixing the problem and trying to rebuild its reputation. This action was announced on the company website:

“We have acted to take responsibility for the clean-up working under the direction of the federal government, to respond swiftly to compensate people affected by the impact of the accident, to look after the health, safety and welfare of the large number of residents and people who helped respond to the spill and to support the economic recovery of the Gulf Coast’s tourism and seafood industries impacted by the spill” (BP, online)

This action, by Kant, is thought to be “doing good” with good intension, regardless of the oil spill’s consequences and that it the long-term damages are not precisely estimated until now.