Bp Case

1. Do you agree with Tony Hayward’s quote at the end of the case? Explain.

      I disagree with Tony Hayward’s opinion. Firstly, as a CEO, he has responsibility to all the risks and results of each disaster. Secondly, before he got the CEO, some accidents have been happened. But he did not learn lessons from these accidents but only emphasize productivity and profit. Thirdly, during and after the accident, he did not set up effective method to remedy mistakes when the problems appeared.


  2. What were the most significant flawed decisions made by BP and its partners?

      The most significant flawed decisions are to ignore the safety inspection procedure and underestimate unfavorable factors during the whole project. Actually, the safety problem existed in the whole operations. To implement long string production casing as over the criteria; centralizers were insufficient; the custom-designed slip-on units were not qualified; standard cement was replaced by light one, etc. All of those resulted the catastrophic accidents. Drilling on the sea was more difficult than drilling on the land. Because of underestimating the current situation, the budget of project was over the expectation; as a result, the top managers wanted to accelerate the process in order to save cost with less consideration about the safety.


  3. How did BP’s history and culture shape decision-making on the Deep-water Horizon rig? How did the political and regulatory environment affect decision-making by BP and its partners?

      BP’s predecessor is the company that aimed to produce more oil to secure the supply for military so that productivity and profit became the certain culture features in the companies. After many accidents in 1990s and 2000s, BP realized the safety problem; however, the safety consciousness was not strong enough. The new group of managers stressed on productivity and profit as always. Consequently, all the decisions on the Deep-water Horizon rig were...