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Essay / Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Explosion: A Film Study companies (CSR)ConclusionIntroductionDeepwater Horizon is a 2016 film directed by Peter Berg based on the real-life explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred on April 20, 2010, killing 11 out of 126 employees. It was the worst oil disaster in U.S. history, during which the explosion lasted 87 days, spilling $210 million. gallons (estimate) in the ocean. This semi-submersible offshore oil drilling platform owned by private contractor Transocean (an offshore oil drilling company) and chartered by British Petroleum (BP), was beginning drilling off the southern coast of Louisiana. The film depicts specific events according to the chief electronics technician aboard the rig, Michael "Mike" Williams (Mark Wahlberg), whose job was to oversee the rig's computers and electrical systems. . He was one of the last workers to leave the platform, going around the lifeboats to help save others who were still trapped. The film also focuses on James "Mr Jimmy" Harrell (Kurt Russell) who is the manager of the offshore installations, Caleb Holloway (Dylan O'Brien) who is part of the drilling team, Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) the dynamic position operator, and BP executives Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and Robert Kaluza (Brad Leland). The film depicts things gone wrong, resulting in the rig exploding and rescuing the employees. The research below details the events and challenges that occurred and the reasons behind them. Many are due to having or lacking management and corporate governance skills. The purpose of this project is to analyze what went wrong as a business and why. Additionally, strategies are proposed to help BP plan for the future and address challenges that have occurred. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayCurrent Challenges for BPThe Deepwater Horizon spilled an estimated 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the largest accidental ocean spill in history. according to Smithsonian. A 22-mile long plume of oil was reported during the spill, which allowed oil to mix with seawater and settle just below the surface. 20% of the spilled oil ended up on the surface and in the seabed. This has damaged deep-sea corals and other invisible ecosystems on the surface that are still trying to recover. According to biologicaldiversity.org, BP is responsible for the destruction/damage to 82,000 birds, 6,165 sea turtles and 25,900 marine mammals. When the facts about how the oil spill started reached the public, BP faced a bad image. Their customers did not want to be loyal to a company that did not care about following proper safety procedures for its employees and was so drastically damaging the environment and marine life. Statistics evaluated by Experian Simmons DataStream prove it: BP has lost a notable number of its American customers. The percentage increased from 26.4% to 16.4% between April 26 and June 28, 2010, representing a loss of 38% of their customers in nine weeks. At the same time, BP's loyal customer basedecreased by 56%. BP faces the challenge of trying to win back lost customers. The loss of customers was one of the factors that led BP to suffer a loss of $6.26 billion. BP had to pay $61 billion in damages. That's more than the market capitalization of the next two largest independent U.S. oil companies, ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum, and more than twice the size of the largest independent U.S. oil company Anadarko Petroleum. Damage costs were paid to various parties, including hundreds of attorneys, 400 local governments, and thousands of plaintiffs such as Transocean and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Clean Water Act penalties and damage to natural resources. This specific payment to the EPA includes medical and cleanup costs, property damage, and economic losses. Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co, said that “before the accident, BP had a market capitalization of $180 billion. The accident cut a third of the company's market capitalization. It’s a miracle the company is still in business.” Initially, BP attempted to challenge the plaintiffs' settlement decision in the Supreme Court, but they lost the case. This causes uncertainty for the company as to how much more it will have to pay on top of an initial $18.7 billion settlement demand. As of 2015, five years after the oil spill, half of the parties who filed monetary claims against BP have still not been paid. This means that BP could potentially be sued and have to pay more money than expected. BP shares fell 51% in forty days on the New York Stock Exchange after the oil spill. It went from $60.57 billion to $29.20 billion. They had to sell up to $30 billion in assets and almost $22 billion in divestitures. This led to a decline in the value of their company and therefore the stock price as well. The total value lost by BP is $105 billion since the day of the oil spill on April 20, 2010.Creative Thinking and Problem Solving StrategiesThe Delphi technique can be used to help solve the problem of the large amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico that killed thousands of people. of marine animals. BP can organize an initiative to attract experts from around the world to provide input and advice on the best method to use to clean up the oil. As a facilitator, BP can present the initiative as a questionnaire bringing together a lot of information in an organized way. Using this strategy, BP will be able to thoroughly analyze each questionnaire and a decision will be made once each option has been discussed and the best path forward has been chosen. For example, BP can start by putting physical barriers in the ocean to trap all the oil and make it easier to clean up without running out. The bad image created by BP posed a threat. They risked losing a large portion of their customer base, resulting in a loss. This is exactly what happened. As mentioned above, they lost 38% of their customer base and suffered a loss of $6.26 billion. BP can use the strategy of performing an external SWOT analysis. The threats have already been identified, so BP can work on ways to create opportunities for itself. For example, they need to involve journalists in their cleanup initiative to report to the public and news channels on everything BP is doing to help clean up environmental damage. Thispublicity will give BP the opportunity to show their good deed to the public and regain their lost customers when they see that BP is making an effort to improve the situation. It is important that BP uses this strategy to analyze what went wrong and what can be done to fix it. BP had to pay $61 billion for damages. Their new goal should be to recoup the money they paid in and rebuild the company's value for the benefit of shareholders and customers. A decision tree strategy can be used because it aims to promote rational decision-making and clarify the available options and the consequences of each. Decision processes can be calculated and a value is reached that shows the probability of success of each option. This will help BP, as their decision to contribute to this challenge may be to improve their image. This will result in a return of their customers and therefore an increase in sales. Decisions on how their image needed to be improved will be placed in the decision tree and each option will be discussed and thought through. BP must have options to improve its image in a cost-effective and ethical manner, for example by advertising to save endangered marine animals affected by the oil spill. BP has the challenge of potentially being sued and having to pay more money than expected because it did not initially pay the plaintiffs. BP needs to develop a pros and cons chart as a strategy to help address this challenge and analyze whether non-payment of claimants will benefit them in the long term. As it stands, BP has two disadvantages: potentially being sued and having to pay more money than expected. Another disadvantage they may add is that they will lose more business because customers do not want to support a business that does not care about helping those affected by the spill. The only benefit would be that they would save money that would have been paid. It is important for BP to implement this strategy because they will be able to better analyze their decision and clearly see the consequences. The downsides in this picture add up more than the upsides, so BP will see that its decision not to initially pay the claimants was a bad idea. They can then formulate a strategy that will help them address this challenge, for example by apologizing to the affected parties for not receiving the requesters and regaining their trust in BP. Their sales can improve by publicizing their good initiative to the public and they can regain some of the customers they had initially lost. BP shares fell, so the company's value and stock price declined. A value chain analysis can be used to address this challenge. BP needs to be very careful about where and how it spends its money due to the huge losses caused by the oil spill. This strategy can be used to analyze where value is created for them in the overall management of their business. By doing this, they will be able to stop activities where no or little value is created and thus save costs that they cannot afford to spend. They can start by analyzing each activity in each sector and determining from where value is or is not being created. Management skills Judgment/decision making There is mud in the pipe drilled into the seabed to pump oil. This mud is called "cement" in the film because it is used to prevent flammable gases and oils from escaping and exploding on the platform. BP executives Vidrine and Kaluza firedthe Schlumberger team who had to perform a mud test to see if the presence and quality was strong enough for drilling to begin (cement bond log test). This decision was made because BP was 43 days late and $50 million over budget. BP took the initiative to reduce expenses by not doing the test, thus getting ahead of the schedule and not losing more money. As a company, they are supposed to be risk oriented, but have sacrificed a test that ensures the safety of their employees before doing dangerous work. If they had performed the test, Schlumberger would have detected that the mud was not strong enough to hold too much pressure and the explosion could have been avoided. Vidrine and Kaluza should have evaluated their judgment on the situation before acting, as wise leaders should do to clearly decide whether what they were doing was right. They should have acted with integrity, but rather out of selfishness. The reasoning for not performing the test was illogical and put the safety of their employees at risk. LeadershipThe results of two negative tests on the drill pipe were inexplicable, which created a challenge on board the rig. The pressure was high, but no sludge was escaping from the pipe onto the platform. Normally, if there is high pressure, it means there is a leak and mud is escaping from the drill pipe. Vidrine adopted the characteristics of a leader to deal with the situation and explained what he thought was wrong and what needed to be done. Vidrine's solution was to do another test, but on the kill line, not the drill pipe, because he says it was simply a faulty sensor reading. If there is no pressure on the kill line, this proves that there has been a faulty reading from the sensor on the drill pipe. Vidrine pointed out that this solution made sense because no one was proposing another and even though not everyone agreed on it, he still launched the test. As a leader, he has to make sure things go according to plan, so if he accepted the fact that there might be another reason why the mud didn't drain, that would mean expense Additional damage would have increased when the Schlumberger crew returned, stopping the drilling operation and the completion of the cement bond test. But because BP was behind schedule and over budget, he motivated his theory and solution on employees, making them doubt themselves, thus demoralizing them. AnalysisNo safety procedure testing was carried out in case of emergency. Vidrine and Kaluza should have gathered relevant information on all checks of their system. From there, they could see how a problem could have arisen and led to challenges. Alternative plans would have been created and the necessary safety procedures implemented in the event of an emergency, so solutions would have been anticipated. All this happened the day after the explosion. When the mud first exploded, three situations occurred: Caleb Holloway yelled at the engineers "what should we do?", an engineer told an employee to be ready to stand by the EDS (also known as the AMF Deadman System) to cut the pipe if necessary. and Holloway rescued an employee and told him to get to the lifeboats. If Vidrine and Kaluza had implemented a safety procedure test, employees would have known what to do in an emergency. Teamwork In the office, Jimmy Harrell and the BP managers were not cooperating together because each party had a different vision of the shipment situation. the Schlumberger team left without testing thecement. BP executives were not listening to what Harrell had to say and what he was arguing about the need to consider employee safety. BP defended itself by saying it had confidence in the integrity of its cement work. Each party has different goals, but as a team, they should all work together to achieve the same goal. This disagreement was not expressed constructively and resulted in Harrell blaming intentions for their decision and them denouncing Harrell as if they were right. As a team, they couldn't find a way to work cooperatively and Jimmy forced the way because he was trying to keep the employees safe. Harrell and the managers have a different view: Harrell is worried about the rig and the crew who live there. Managers only care about the cost of the business trying to make it as high as possible. afraid of discovering a problem that needs to be solved. This would result in additional expenses to repair it and additional delays. This test is authorized by the Mineral Management Service (MMS) which was not carried out and therefore unethical. As managers, it is ethical to ensure that their employees are working in a safe environment that they have not prioritized. Harrell ensures ethical standards are met by requiring managers to perform a negative pressure test to determine the integrity of the cement, which is important in certifying employee safety. Safety was neglected, therefore a thorough risk analysis was not carried out, which would have prepared employees for an emergency. Transparency There is a moment in the film during the negative pressure test scene where none of the employees can explain why the pressure in the pipe was very high, but no sludge was coming out. This was due to the lack of transparency. Employees did not have accurate data and figures on the pipe and the quality of the mud inside because BP executives fired the Schlumberger team before they could perform the test. If this had been done, employees would have had to correct the information to understand what was happening in the pipe and be able to strategize on what actions to take next in a clear and confident manner. This lack of transparency led to employee uncertainty but production continued thanks to Vidrine's insistence. BP officials should have ensured that testing of the cement bond logs was carried out so that they could have confidence in the integrity of the results, which would have led to better decision-making than had been the case. done initially. Adequate and effective control After the fire broke out on platform two, employees in the control room are seen trying to help each other. One puts on the jacket for the other and tells him what to do (go to the lifeboats and move away from the rigging). BP officials never had adequate and effective control due to the lack of safety evacuation procedures implemented in the event of an emergency. The result is shown in this scene where the employees didn't know exactly what to do about their shock. Managers should have ensured that all employees have a balance of knowledge and skills essential to a safety culture by exercising the control they do. It was the responsibility of managers to ensure that a security team was in place in the event of an emergency to guide the evacuation. As no checks were made regarding employee training and the lack of knowledge transmitted, no one knew how to evacuate the platform. The Commission's report.
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