...Topic Tar sands oil spill in arkansas Name Nadya Sanjaya SID 1412251 DELETE THIS PAGE WHEN YOU HAND IN THE EXAM Objective: This take home exam is designed to test your understanding and interpretation of engineering ethics principles and social science issues as related to contemporary engineering problems. Procedure: Select a current engineering topic that is not the Dreamliner. Follow the questions on the subsequent pages. Writing format: Times new roman font, 12 pt. Single-spaced with justified margins. Just like on this page here. One space in between each paragraph. Email the final copy to r.angelo.borrelli@gmail.com. Points will be deducted for incorrect format. Citations: Please cite all sources you use. In the text of the paper, please use a superscript when you make a citation, like this.1 Then, in the REFERENCES section, list your sources in order. Length: ‘Sufficient.’ I am not going to give a set page limit. Be concise but show depth. Writing style: You will be writing in some form, whether technical writing or essays, and then when you get jobs in the real world. There is no time to start practicing like now. Grammar and spelling are part of the grade! Proof-read your paper several times! 1. Introduction [10] Please introduce your topic and explain why it is important to you. The topic I’m writing is about the tar sands oil spill in Mayflower, Arkansas. ExxonMobil, the company that runs the pipeline was in charge of the...
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...approximately 3.8 million barrels of oil and gas per day and possesses 22,400 service stations over the world. However, the oil disaster called as BP oil spill or the deep water horizon oil spill was occurred on April 20th, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico recording the greatest oil spill compared to other oil spill accidents in our history. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion caused deaths of 11 workers, 17 workers injured as well as a tremendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, this case has been described as a complex accident including a variety of issues ranging from environmental to economic, politics and even ethical issues. The goal of our research is to find any ethical issues since this disaster happened is closely related to ethics which is concerned with moral obligation, social responsibility and justice (Carolyn Wiley, 1997) either individual (‘bad apples’) or organizational (‘bad barrels), which should be evaluated to verify this case. Firstly, the ethical issues can largely be divided into three categories, namely (1) technical design which has had some testing flaws before the actual usage and insufficient guidelines against the negative pressure test, (2) human factors including misjudgment, errors and a failure in duty, (3) organizational system such as taking risk procedures to save time and money and refusing the advice of staff and contractors as well as slowness to react in the accident. Thus, the ethical issues in BP oil spill case relevant to the individuals...
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...becomes increasingly interconnected, the widespread availability of information has allowed individuals a great deal of transparency into the activities of their ideal employer. The surfacing of world issues in recent years, ranging from the effects of global warming on the environment to widespread poverty, has forged in the collective business ethos a new trend towards sustainable business practices. Additionally, with the recent decades’ emergence of women and visible minorities in the workforce, ethical questions regarding gender equality and racial discrimination have inevitably emerged into the spotlight of ethical scrutiny. This recent leaning towards transparency and sustainability has made it harder than ever for corporations to avoid the public witch hunt for ethical misconduct. Indeed, as students nearing graduation, a great uncertainty towards our future looms over us us with each day bringing a new controversy as to who to work for and who to avoid. The present paper seeks to compare Starbucks Coffee Company as a more favourable company to work under when compared to the controversial ExxonMobil on the ethical grounds of employee rights, supply chain regulations, and environment and community engagement STARBUCKS – SUPPLY CHAIN With an increasingly important mandate, the issue of Supply Chain Management is quickly becoming a prime question of transparency and respect for human dignity. For any corporation, both consumers and employees demand to know how their products...
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...Eric Davis Soc 120 Introduction to Ethics & Social Responsibility Joe Niehaus October 3, 2010 Environmental Ethical Issues History According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (2008) environmental ethics began to come to the surface in 1970s. The environmentalists started urging philosophers who were involved with environmental groups to do something about environmental ethics. Most academic activity in the 1970s was spent debating the Lynn White thesis and the tragedy of the commons. These debates were primarily historical, theological, and religious, not philosophical. Throughout most of the decade philosophers sat on the sidelines trying to determine what a field called environmental ethics might look like. The first philosophical conference was organized by William Blackstone at the University of Georgia in 1972. Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of the environment and its nonhuman contents. In the literature on environmental ethics the distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value has been of considerable importance. When environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in the early 1970s, it did so by posing a dispute to traditional anthropocentrism. It questioned the assumed moral superiority of human beings to members of other species on earth. In addition, it investigated the possibility of rational...
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...Chevron Chevron, one of the oldest energy companies in United States, was first founded as Pacific Coast Oil Company in 1879 and was named as Chevron Corporation in 1984. Several companies were established after Standard Oil’s split during 1980s’ and Chevron Corporation was among those big energy corporations who merged with those companies. The company is publicly traded on NYSE, Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500. Chevron is involved in petroleum and natural gas industry. It does almost anything related to the industry from exploring to generating power. With over 60,000 employees Chevron operates business in 84 countries; Angola, Australia, Gulf of Mexico, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and United States are regions where the cooperation mainly operates primary exploration and production. Other than oil and natural gas, Chevron is engaged to biofuel, geothermal, hydrogen, solar and wind energy production. According to the official website for businesses Chevron offers following goods and services: * Additives * Aviation Oils * Base Oils * Chemicals * Fuels * Lubricants * Marine * MSDS * Specialty Products * Technology And for consumers it offers goods and services listed below: * Fuels and Stations * Gift and Credit Cards * Pay Bill * Motor Oils and Fuel Additives Code of Ethical Conduct Chevron relies on values such as integrity, trust, diversity, ingenuity, partnership, protecting...
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...The Socially Responsible Oil Company: An Examination of Corporate Ethics by Peter Fischer A Paper Submitted in Fulfillment of the USD School of Law Writing Requirement Energy Law Professor Burleson Spring, 2009 Table of Contents Introduction 2 Background 3 The Need for CSR at Home and Abroad 7 Case Study Analyses: Four Critical Events in the Oil Industry and their Effect on CSR Case Study #1: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill 9 Case Study #2: Occidental and the Piper Alpha Disaster 12 Case Study #3: A Two-Part Analysis of Shell in the Mid-1990s a) Shell’s Human Rights Violations in Nigeria 16 b) Shell’s Response—Outsource CSR 21 Case Study #4: BP’s Major Advances in CSR 24 Ethics and the Problem of the Public Relations Quick Fix 27 Analyzing the Current Corporate Culture: Failure to Meet the Triple Bottom Line 32 Conclusion 38 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...…………41 Introduction Over the past twenty years an irrefutable shift in the oil industry has occurred—the shift to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).[1] The purpose of this paper is to analyze the motivation behind this shift and determine if these CSR practices are genuine. In other words, does the adoption of CSR denote a tangible change in the way oil companies operate, or is it merely an elaborate public relations exercise? To answer...
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...As we all know, the BP spill of 2010 was both catastrophic and costly. In April 2010, BP’s Transocean drilling rig Deep water Horizon sank in the Gulf of Mexico killing over 10 people and spewing more than 200 million gallons of oil into our ocean water. This historic and devastating spill is now labeled as worst in U.S. history due to its crippling economic factors throughout Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. It has taken us a year to restore our relationships and our strong presence in the energy sector so we must have a plan in place to get us back on track. In the presentation I will be discussing BP’s planning function of management as it relates to the organization’s goals and strategies. I will then discuss the influence that legal issues, ethics, and corporate social responsibility have had on management planning at BP. Last, I will analyze the influence that legal issues, ethics, and corporate social responsibility have had on management planning at BP. Global demand for energy is expected to increase by 50% between now and 2030. Eighty-five percent of the energy to meet this demand is expected to come from fossil fuels (BP.com, 2012). In order for BP to recover and tap into this 50% increase, we must first plan and analyze our current situation. In this unique industry, anticipating the future has become even more important than before. We must first create a plan that will not only guide the recovery process...
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...Summary BP plc, formerly known as British Petroleum and Anglo-Persian Oil Company, is a multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England (“BP”). It is the fifth-largest company in the world measured by 2012 revenues (BP Annual Report 51). Its extensive corporate history has created a non-malleable image and reputation which present-day marketing strategies must overcome in order to effectively promote the ideals of industry leadership and ethical responsibility. BP is faced with significant challenges to its brand as a consequence of its widely-known safety and environmental policy issues. An explosion at one of its Texas refineries caused fifteen deaths, 170 injuries, and a violation of the Clean Air Act in 2005. Years of neglecting pipeline corrosion led to its violation of the Clean Water Act in 2006 when Alaskan oil pipelines leaked crude oil into the tundra. The following year, another BP spill occurred near Prudhoe Bay, leaking toxic chemicals into the tundra and thus killing wildlife and vegetation (“BP Gulf Coast Disaster and Recovery”). These incidents, however, were dwarfed by an explosion at BP’s Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling rig, Deepwater Horizon, in April 2010. The explosion caused the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. It resulted in the deaths of eleven people and the release of an estimated 210 million gallons of oil into the surrounding environment (On-Scene Coordinator Report). BP controversially...
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...There was a vast number of ethical issues raised in the movie “Enron-the Smartest Guys in the Room” but the four I am going to focus on are listed below. Art Anderson, Ken Lay and all of the other executives did a number of unethical things which ultimately brought down Enron and affected thousands of employees and their futures. The bottom line was that each and every one of them acted out of greed for the almighty dollar. 1- Encouraging employees to invest and buy stock in Enron when they knew the truth about the lack of value in the stock. As an employee you trust in your management to make the best choices both for you and for the business to succeed. Ken Lay and other executives strongly encouraged Enron employees to invest in it’s stock. They all knew that the company was not doing well and yet they encouraged others to spend their hard earned money investing in it all the while they are selling their shares of stock. Employees trusted and relied on their decisions and in the end it ended up hurting them. With Ken Lay publicly encouraging its employees and other investors to invest in Enron’s stock he is affecting their future and retirement. These employees didn’t earn nearly as much as he did and he is convincing them to invest their money into an entity that was set to fail by Lay himself. I don’t believe any proper ethical alternative action could have been taken in this situation. Of course you want your employees to have faith in the company they work for...
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...Ethics Case Analysis BP BP Struggles to Resolve Sustainability Disaster Case Summary: The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 is the worst oil spill in US history. Initial claims on the scope of the spill, as released by BP, was that 5,000 barrels per day were being released into the water, although they stated they had no way of precisely measuring the spill. Outside analysts have stated that between 54,000 and 84,000 barrels per day were leaking into the area. This estimate has been largely supported and accepted. The spill lasted for 87 days before workers finally sealed the leak, but by that time, more than 4 million barrels of oil had been released into the gulf. The BP oilrig, owned by Transocean, Deepwater Horizon had been in operation in the Gulf of Mexico since February 2001. The rig was valued at more than $560 million dollars and worked on many different wells in the gulf. The last well it operated on was the Macondo well. It was this well that the oil spill came from and was brought about by several preventable errors on the part of BP and Transocean management and employees. The Deepwater Horizon vessel was an exploratory rig assigned the duty of finding oil, reporting it, and capping the well for another extracting type rig to come in and harvest the oil. While drilling the well, the rig encountered pockets of natural gas buildups where it was drilling. A week prior to the fatal explosion, Horizon encountered one of these pockets and the natural...
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...injured. An exploration for crude oil, now remembered as one of our nation’s largest oil spills in history. A well control event allowed hydrocarbons to escape from the Macondo Well onto Transocean’s Deepwaster Horizon, resulting in explosions and fire on the rig. The fire, which was fed by hydrocarbons from the well continued to burn for 36 hours until the rig sank to bottom of the ocean. “Hydrocarbons continued to flow from the reservoir through the wellbore and the blowout preventer for 87 days, causing a spill of national significance” (Crisis Watch). The operations were controlled by BP Exploration & Production Inc., in which they held the lease contract as operators of Mississippi Canyon Block 252, which contains the Macondo Well. Deepwater Horizon exploration was to collect crude oil, one of the leading fuels in the world. After the explosion that shocked the nation, BP formed an investigation team that was in charge of gathering the facts surrounding the accident, analyzing available information and to identify possible causes and making recommendations to enable prevention of similar accidents in the future. The BP investigation Team began its work immediately in the aftermath of the accident, since gathering information directly from the explosion site was slightly out of the question immediately due to the horrendous events and lack of testimonies and vital facts, BP investigation team worked independently from other BP spill response activities and organizations...
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...Business Lydia M. Wityk Strayer University Abstract This paper will explore the business of oil companies drilling off the coast line of the United States. It will explore the benefits from the business of oil companies to the detrimental effects of the oil spills from the offshore drilling. Should we continue to drill for oil off the coast with the possibility of additional spillage into the oceans. We know that oil spills damage the environment, and the social and economic welfare of the residents in the area. At the same time the oil companies can positively affect the economy and the United State’s welfare. In comparing both sides of the argument I will look at the past and current oil companies to determine if they acted morally in their everyday business practice. At this post-BP disaster era, the United States is questioning whether we should continue to drill and expand our drilling. I will utilize the consequentialist theory to determine what would be the best next step for the U.S. to take. Using the current information gathered on BP’s business practice and the effects of the oil spill, I will weigh the ratio of good to bad to determine my opinion on whether to drill or not to drill. Off Shore Drilling – To Drill or Not to Drill The Effects of Drilling on the Environment and Business The United States has been offshore drilling for oil since 1886. Yet today offshore drilling is still quite controversial. During the 2008 presidential...
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...Zaphiropoulos Date: November 16, 2012 British Petroleum is a public limited company. They suffered a huge downfall from their 2010 Mexican Gulf oil spill, although have rebounded very positively since then with major improvements in the company, both ethically and environmentally. This company markets its products in over 100 countries and, as of December 2011, employs over 83,000 employees. British Petroleum has worked hard to honour their commitments to the people and communities of the Gulf Coast. This company produces the natural resources that the world depends on daily, and produces them in some of the most operative, proficient, and resourceful ways which are possible today. (BP, n.d.). This company proves to be constantly evolving in the world. They are always innovating and coming up with new ways to operate their business as to cause the most minimal effect or damage on the environment. BP has become one of the most environmentally aware companies of the modern age, especially from what they have gone through in the Gulf of Mexico, and the revolutionary technologies they have integrated in their business operations. The vertically integrated company uses three main types of leadership, as well as an operational controlling method to ensure that the organization functions accordingly and remains socially responsible, ethical, and practices corporate social responsibility. By focussing on developing the company’s organizational structure on upstream and downstream tasks...
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...I. Introduction BP is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". It is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It also has major renewable energy activities, including in biofuels, hydrogen, solar and wind power. BP has operations in over 80 countries, produces around 3.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has 22,400 service stations worldwide. Its largest division is BP America, which is the biggest producer of oil and gas in the United States and is headquartered in Houston, Texas. As at 31 December 2010, BP had total proven commercial reserves of 18.07 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The name "BP" derives from the initials of one of the company's former legal names, British Petroleum. II. Issues 2010 was a year that called BP’s sustainability into question. The remarkable accident in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010 cost 11 lives, leading to a major oil spill and a widespread loss of trust in BP, caused irreparable damage on the surrounding environment. What did they do before and after the event, how to build a safer and stronger BP as they claimed? The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which flowed unabated for three months...
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...lead to its success; however they also come with external factors that the company has little control over. However not a rule, an organization is can have a factor that affects both the internal and external factors that affect the four functions of management. Globalization is described as “allowing a company to maximize its profits by trying to become the best in the world (Bateman, 2011).” British Petroleum saw the advantage in globalizing because of the world demand for natural resources. This was an internal factor that leads to the globalization of the company. One of the internal factors that helped BP in its globalization efforts was the company becoming public in 1995. This allowed it to become 12th largest producer of crude oil, fifth largest refiner, and Brittan’s largest company (British Petroleum a Global Company in a Global World, 2003). Globalization has allowed BP to provide goods and services in locations of the world that would not have access to this commodity otherwise. Whenever a company goes global, it has different external factors to deal with. One of these external factors that affect the four...
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