BP's past safety history and US Congressional examination

BP's Reaction And Strategy Of Change:

The safety history of British oil giant, BP, has been the subject of increased examination by various sectors such as the U.S. Congress in relation to the recent blow up that contributed to the death of 11 people. The United States Congress carried out various hearings regarding BP's recent safety history because of the explosion that left more than 10 workers dead. One of the major issues in the hearings has been the evidence of BP's violation of its safety standards that continue to pose numerous safety risks to its workers and various people across various regions. The recent fatal explosion was brought by oil spill, which was due to the infringement of the occupational safety standards and regulations.

While the incident elicited significant concerns across the globe, the British oil giant continued to state its unprecedented reaction to the unprecedented environmental disaster. However, the company is renowned for a history of violation of occupational safety standards to an extent that more than 90% of breaches of industry standards belong to the oil giant. The infringement of occupational safety standards and regulations by BP is regarded as the company's culture of incompetence. This culture of incompetence has emerged because of the numerous fatal oil spill incidents involving BP and the relative lack of effective measures by the firm's management to solve the issue. BP's inability to resolve the impasse is despite of the fact that the challenges seem to be known by the firm.

In response to the crisis, BP has recognized the need to change through transforming its values and behaviors, changing its health and safety culture, and changes in leadership. Actually, BP initiated a far-reaching program that is geared towards enhancing safety and risk management within the group ("How BP is Changing," n.d.). While this program is also designed to help the firm to earn back trust, BP acknowledges the need for more efforts despite of the recent achievements in improving occupational safety within the firm. Some of the major efforts taken by BP in reaction to the crisis include the establishment of safety and operational risk team, review of its risk management system, upstream restructuring, and evaluation of its approach towards management of relationships. The other measures include revising its safety values and behaviors, contractor management, and alignment of individual performance and reward ("How BP is Changing," n.d.).

The new safety measures were adopted by the firm based on the report provided by Ernst & Young as part of the company's 2011 sustainability reporting. While these efforts were comprehensive and wide-ranging in order to promote sustainability at BP, the major initiatives related to the firm's response to the crisis were safety and operational risk, upstream restructuring, and risk management. The huge safety and operational risk team was established to set BP's company-wide requirements for risk management and occupational safety. The risk management initiative focuses on standardizing its reporting processes to promote a consistent means of reporting risk. As the major aspect associated with the oil spill incidents, upstream restructuring examined the company's drilling wells. In this case, the restructuring process reshaped upstream business i.e. explorations, development, and production into a single arrangement for centralized drilling wells.