BP’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
In the United States, just about six hundred million acres of land is considered public
land. There are various amounts of public agencies that are supposed to serve the public interest
regarding what we do with public land. There is much controversy though when it comes to the
specifications of these decisions. A lot of questions and conflict arise when trying to deal with
such decisions.
An incident that happened, BP’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, sparked these questions.
The US is not shy of its use of oil. The US uses more than 21 million barrels of oil each day,
which is equivalent to about 2 billion dollars a day. Knowing this, it doesn’t come to surprise
how much oil spilled out when the explosion at the oil rig just 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana
occurred. It was a tragedy known as the biggest marine oil spill in history. Eleven men died, as
well as the loss of thousands of sea creatures. Not only did fatalities happen but a lot of people
were out of jobs because of this incident. The sea and fishing industries were affected as well as
the tourist industry. There were many victims affected. BP took responsibility for the accident
and also set up a 20 billion dollar fund for those who were affected by the oil spill. Although BP
took responsibility, was that enough?
In today’s society, the preservation of our environment is not being taken as seriously as
it needs to be. People don’t realize that slowly, each and every day, we are destroying our planet.
So an incident like BP’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is a huge deal. When situations like this
arise, the big companies with a lot of money like to downplay the situation as much as they can
just to save themselves from public scrutiny. They do things like assume financial responsibility
and help those who are affected. Some may think that they are doing this because they don’t
want this to be their downfall and some may say they are doing this because they actually want
to help those who were affected. But either way, did they do all that they could to prevent this