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同其他公司一样，信誉是英国石油公司的未来。这取决于它的员工在世界各地支持英国石油公司业务经营的多元化。尽管如此，他们也承担起了合乎道德及合规的商业行为的个人责任。
英国石油公司的调查结果令人鼓舞。这次审计报告的目的在于他们的流程和管理策略提出变革和改进，在全面分析了英国石油公司过去几年的表现的基础上成功实现了此目的。在对以下四个方面：可持续发展，管理技巧，法律责任和职业道德行为进行了客观详细的调查之后，通过评估英国石油公司自己的操作系统，讨论案例研究并对其战略提出建议和改进。这些问题需要预先被考虑以确保BP在全球石油和天然气市场的稳固地位。此外墨西哥湾原油泄漏事件视为帮助证明英国石油公司在处理健康安全与环境方面、法律责任和职业道德操守方面的表现，其他有代表性的案例也将根据每个主题相应的要求进行讨论。如果英国石油公司认真考虑实施本报告中所提出的政策和管理策略，Group 54可以肯定英国石油公司将大大降低事故隐患和风险，进一步提升其成就。我们希望英国石油公司在其今后的事业发展中一切顺利。 BP, just the same as all the other companies, reputation, is company’s future. This depends on a diverse range of BP employees around the world support the business operations of BP. Nevertheless they also take personal responsibility for ethical and compliant business conduct.
Code of conduct covers a huge number of issues from five key angles of group’s daily operations: health, safety, security and the environments; employees; business partners; governments and communities; and company assets and financial integrity.
政府和社区——Governments and Communities
社区贡献——Community Contribution
BP has a lot of impacts on many worldwide and local communities, governments and economies. Those communities are located in more than 80 countries world where BP operates its business.
安永事务所的特别观察——Specific observation from Ernst & Young
BP previously reported anticipated community investment of at least $500 million every five years, most recently during the period ending 2008. Although spending has continued at a similar level, the majority is in developed countries, with almost half in the US. BP could report the criteria used for choosing projects and whether it has a long-term commitment to a specified level of spend. (Ernst & Young, 2009)
Five-year data, trends and interpretations for BP’s Contribution to Communities by Region
The community programmes at BP can be filled into three categories:
Building business skills: by developing local business capability and supply chains to enable BP benefits more from local economy.
Supporting education and other community needs: investing in local education and other areas that relate to local communities’ interest and needs to deploy BP’s skills and contacts.
Sharing technical expertise with local governments: In an ethical and responsible way to support governments in their efforts to achieve sustainable development by using BP’s influence, reach, and resources.
Case Study: Local government and community engagement in Trinidad & Tobago
Operator at the Atlantic LNG facility in Point Fortin, Trinidad
Since 2006, BP launched an engagement strategy in Trinidad & Tobago. This case is first of its kind in Trinidad & Tobago. The engagement strategy involves: local residents, non-government organisations (NGOs) and regulators.
How did BP do?
For local communities and NGOs, BP worked in partnership with United Nations (UN) Development Programme to provide NGOs technical training, hence enable them to challenge unsustainable development in the country.
For regulators, BP invited them to workshop and project evaluations hence help them to build understanding of oil and nature gas industry operations.
Outcomes
The communities and NGOs have raised more concerns on issues affecting the ecosystem surrounding them and been able to have some impact on government plans for development.
Regulators had a better understanding on how BP runs its business. Health and safety practice standard across the local industry have also been improved under the influence of BP
Employees
BP is committed to ensuring that it fulfils its obligations to operate fairly, justly and in accordance with the national laws. In particular, no employee or potential employee shall be discriminated against on grounds of gender, race or disability. BP also extends the concept of equal opportunity to include discrimination on grounds of religious or political beliefs or sexual orientation.
This policy is not hard to tell from figure of Diversity and inclusion on the left.
多样和包容的领导集团——Diversity and Inclusion in Group Leadership
鼓励员工发挥主观能动性——Encouraging Employee Initiative
As all the other major international companies, how many bonuses each group and individual received were based on their performance within the year. BP is always keeps trying to make sure that the benefits packages are fair and sustainable for ages. For instance, there is a new flexible benefits plan been introduced in the UK in 2010. It includes health screening benefits and private medical insurance, as well as some other pension plan.
尊重人权——Respecting Human Right
There is an independent and confidential helpline in BP – OpenTalk. Every employee can contact OpenTalk anytime, anywhere through multilingual telephone line or email, fax, letter etc. OpenTalk is open 24/7 to anyone who needs advice, raises concern or reports other issues. There is zero tolerance of retaliation against the people.
In 2009, there were 874 cases raised on OpenTalk, which are about 50 less than the previous year. According to official statistic “The most common issues raised in 2009 related to employment matters such as alleged failure to provide fair treatment, equal opportunity and a respectful, harassment-free workplace.” (Ernst & Young, 2009)
墨西哥湾漏油事件——Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Two months after oil spill, BP announced it would donate to restore, improve and protect the wildlife habitats along the area had already been polluted. Half month later, BP announced that it will donate its net revenue from sale of oil recovered from the Macondo to National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
“The extent of the oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and its foreseeable long-term effects on the environment and the local population – in addition to the economic effects and the long-term damage to the reputation of the company – were included in the analysis leading up to BP’s removal. The decision, which was taken by the Index Design Committee, was communicated to the company.” (Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, 2010)
As a result of damage the local environment, BP plc. was removed from the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) From June 1, 2010. Three months late, in September 2010 BP was thrown out of FTSE4Good which is the main ethical investment index in Europe.
As for the future, BP shall work in a closer partnership with local authorities and communities to help further restoring local environment back to what it was before the oil spill, this including wildlife habitats and fish farms.
In order to back to DJSI and FTSE4Good indices on 2012, BP will continue working close with local universities and NGOs on researching methods to improve fuel efficiency and new hence to further reduce its customer CO2 emission.
健康安全管理和环境法——Health and Safety Management and Environmental Law
背景——Background
HS&E Management is vital to social activities and business operation and ultimately aims to prevent harm to people and environment. Health and Safety Management promotes a safe and healthy working environment that allows organization to consistently identify and control its health and safety risks, reduce the potential for accidents, aid legislative compliance and improve overall performance. Environmental Law aims to reduce the impacts of human activity, both on the natural environment and humanity itself. It is normally regarded from two aspects: pollution control and remediation, and resource conservation and management. In addition to the standard HS&E system, such as the HSE Guidance Booklet HS(G)65 “Successful health and safety management”, a number of companies process their own management operation, such as BP, employing the Operating Management System (OMS).
英国石油公司业务管理系统介绍——Introduction on BP’s OMS System
The core BP’s concept is that no accidents, no harm to people and no damage to the environment. However, the oil and gas business is inherently risky. BP’s former group chief executive Tony Hayward’s statement in BP’s annual report (2009) reflected the recognition of risk: “Risk remains a key issue for every business, but at BP it is fundamental to what we do. We operate at the frontiers of the energy industry, in an environment where attitude to risk is key. The countries we work in, the technical and physical challenges we take on and the investments we make – these all demand a sharp focus on how we manage risk.”
After the large explosion in BP's Texas City Refinery in 2005, OMS was introduced as a key safety step. OMS provides a framework of processes, standards and practices to help deliver consistent performance, progressing to excellence, in operations and safety. As described by Tony Hayward, the OMS “is the foundation for a safe, effective, and high-performing BP. It has two purposes: to further reduce HSE risks in our operations and to continuously improve the quality of those operations”.
业务管理系统框架要素——OMS Framework Elements
One of the frameworks of OMS applied prevalently as shown in Figure 1 is composed of eight dimensions associated with how people, plant, processes, and performance apply within BP. These include risk, procedures, assets, optimization, organization, leadership, results and privilege to operate.
Figure 1: OMS Framework of BP[1]
[1] http://.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9026487&contentId =7048817
BP’s Achievement
Moreover, BP operates six-point plan to improve process HS&E system and reduce risk at operations.
Figure 2: Path to a New Management System
The six-point plan is composed of three operators—plant, process and people and the potential major incidents and losses aims to be reduced through layers of protection.
Plant : is referred to engineering hardware, control systems, physical layouts;
Processes: includes identification of management systems control and mitigation of risks, and development of continuous OMS;
People: apply capability in terms of leadership skills, relevant knowledge and experience, and the organizational culture.
By applying OMS system and continuous in improvement described above, HS&E performance of BP in the past few years is illustrated through analyzing the data and figure extracted from BP official annual report.
Figure 3 below shows the safety performance in BP’s in the past five years and the corresponding records of BP within OMS framework are shown in Table 1 in Appendix.
Figure 3: Personal Safety of BP from 2005 to 2009
Safety metric shows that personal safety of BP is maintained at a certain level from 2005 and there is a large improvement in 2009. Their workforce injury rates for days away from work frequency, recordable injuries frequency and the number of oil spills were significantly reduced in 2009. Through analysis of the data, operation of BP under OMS system protects and develops personal safety and oil spills till 2009. Furthermore, Figure 2 in Appendix shows the BP days away from work frequency rate from 1987 to 2007 which obviously decreases.
Figure 4 shows the environment records for exploration and production, refining and petrochemicals of BP from 2001 to 2009 and the figure is corresponding the data in Table 2 in the Appendix.
Figure 4: Environmental Records of BP from 2001 to 2009
Figure 4 shows the refining and petrochemicals are reduced since 2001. However, exploration and production in the following years is increased, especially, the significant rise from 2007. The reason for the increase in exploration and production GHG intensity in 2009 is due to the start–up of our Tangguh LNG project which also resulted in increasing flaring. Although the exploration and production increases significantly, greenhouse gas emission (GHG) intensity is still improved due to decrease in refining and petrochemicals since 2001. However, from the data in Table 2 in the Appendix, even though GHG expanded concernedly in 2009, the environmental expenditure did not increase to ameliorate GHG.
From the discussion above, the brief summary of BP’s HS&E system can be drawn as the HS&E performance of BP maintains at an outstanding level and develops continuously till 2009 within OMS operation. However, after the explosion that caused the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, deficiencies and drawbacks existing in BP’s OMS system are realized. BP said "there can be no assurance" that a major global deployment of its in-house OMS would identify all risks or provide information on the right actions to take when things go wrong.
As stated already, after the large explosion in BP's Texas City Refinery in 2005, BP adapted management system and HS&E is set as their primary priority. However, the event of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 broke the guarantee that 11 people died in the explosion and the environment and ecosystem are damaged seriously. The consequence for BP itself is that a net loss of $16.97 billion during the second quarter of 2010, with the oil spill costing $32.2 billion up to that point On July 27, 2010.
Table 1 shows the progress of the oil spills till August, 2010.
Source
Date
Barrels per day
Gallons per day
BP estimate of hypothetical worst case scenario (assumes no blowout preventer)
Permit
162,000
6,800,000
United States Coast Guard
April 23
0
0
BP and United States Coast Guard
April 24
1,000
42,000
Official estimates
April 29
1,000 to 5,000
42,000 to 210,000
Official estimates
May 27
12,000 to 19,000
500,000 to 800,000
Official estimates
June 10
25,000 to 30,000
1,100,000 to 1,300,000
Flow Rate Technical Group
June 19
35,000 to 60,000
1,500,000 to 2,500,000
Internal BP documents hypothetical worst case (assumes no blowout preventer)
June 20
up to 150,000
up to 4,200,000
Official estimates
August 2
62,000
2,604,000
Table 1: the Progress of the Oil Spills
Table 1 obviously indicates that the level of oil spills reached the peak at the end of June two months after explosion. The spill is almost 20 times greater than Exxon Valdez oil spill. Such a worst environmental disaster ruins the ecosystem severely.
According to National Parks Conservation Association, eight national parks, natural environment, cultural treasures, and wildlife are at risk. More than 400 species that live in the Gulf islands and marshlands are threatened. Table 2 shows some records of the dead wildlife affected by spills oils of Gulf Mexico from November 2010.
Source
Date
Consequence
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
November 2, 2010
6,814 dead animals had been collected, including 6,104 birds, 609 sea turtles, 100 dolphins and other mammals, and 1 other reptile
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
January 1, 2011
67 dead dolphins have been found in the area affected by the oil spill, with 35 of them premature or newborn calves.
the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport
February, 2011
Dead baby dolphins are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama shorelines at about 10 times the normal number for the first two months of the year.
Table 2: Sample records of Ecosystem affected of Oil Spills
Not only the natural environment is damaged, but also are the human’s health along the East Coast threatened, because of the injured water quality of ocean and polluted seafood.
Discussion and Suggestion
Spills oil of Gulf Mexico cautions the deficiencies and drawbacks on BP’s HS&E system discussed as follows.
1.提高识别风险的能力——Improve the Ability to Indentify Risks
BP operates outstanding technologies and machines of oils exploration with an comprehensive OMS system with risks analysis. However, companies are not taking a holistic approach to assess and manage their risk exposures, and people sometimes skip the potential risks when they realize the reduction on risks must be invested a large number of expenditure. The failure of spills oil in the Gulf of Mexico is mainly due to the unanticipated difficulties that are encountered when drilling at depths that are relatively unfamiliar to the industry.
It is vital to improve the ability to identify and manage risks objectively. The greatest failure of most enterprise risk management programs is that they cannot de-center. That is, they cannot see the risk from different perspectives internally or externally, and cannot coexist with residual risks form the risk indentified elimination procedure. The risks management processes can be represented as,
Figure 5: Risk Management Process
Because of the imprecise risk identification, the process was in a wrong direction from the second steps. Risk identification sets out to identify an organization’s exposure to uncertainty which is related to the legal, social, political and cultural environment, as well as the development of a sound understanding of its strategic and operational objectives, including factors critical to its success and the threats and opportunities related to the achievement of these objectives. Risk identification should be approached in a methodical way to ensure that all significant activities within the organization have been identified and all the risks flowing from these activities defined. All associated volatility related to these activities should be identified and categorized.
2.科技创新——Innovation on Technology
.In 14th May 2010 and just spills of oil in Gulf of Mexico occurring, and BP stated that the company actually does not have specialized technology to preventing spills of oils in deepwater horizon. People wonder that how could BP start such a huge project without dealing with the possible significant risks? As a global oil and gas company involving daily activities of oil exploration and natural gas and field development and production, it is extremely ridiculous that spills of oil was not one of major risks, even though oil spills happened several times before.
3.增加应对紧急情况以及健康安全与环境意识的响应时间——Increase the Response Time to deal with Emergencies and HS&E Consciousness
In the first three weeks, the giant machine to stopping the spills of oils did not operate normally, because of lack of preparation and prediction. Hayward the former CEO in BP told the Guardian in 14th May 2010, "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” HS&E is more than one of management strategies to achieve more profits. What’s more important, HS&E should become to the business culture. Increasing the response time to deal with emergencies is based on the precise identification and evaluation of risks in order to minimize harms and injuries to employee and ecosystem.
3.将安全与健康策略融入日常工作——Safety and Health Approaches penetrated in Daily Work
More specifically, an employer should pay special attention to an employee’s safety and health needs. This can be done by making healthy foods available in the company for employees to have during work hours. A conductive work environment should also be maintained by ensuring good room temperature; low humidity; low noise levels; good lighting levels and good washroom facilities. The providing of such amenities will help employees to be alert and able to perform better; hence improving their work experience and leading the company to make better profits.
George Odiorne concludes in his book entitled, ‘Management and the Activity Trap,’ that activity traps are created when:
The oil industry is faced with risk issues that go well beyond fraudulent financial reporting. Greater recognition that operational risks can be the root cause of corporate failure is now becoming apparent. BP is not alone in its failure in the gulf. Toyota, Ford, Firestone, PDVSA (Venezuela’s State Oil Company), all have given us horrible examples of operational failure. While these have been less tragic than the gulf spill, more are certain to come.
英国石油公司的可持续发展——Sustainable development of BP
介绍——Introduction
While positive influence growing with the development of human society, the limit of natural energy resource, the negative effect to the environment, and the increment of demand to energy such social and natural problems appear to be a non-negligible issue which affect or even against the growth of human society. The concept of sustainable development is indicated to the publication to be a general solution for those issues, and delivered in their own way.
主要挑战——Major Challenge
According to the statement of BP, there will be around 40% increase of energy consumption in 2030 than the total number nowadays due to the anticipation of International Energy Agency projections, even though the growth of energy demand in 2008 was only 1.4% which is the lowest growth since 2001 affected by the downturn of global economic and the non-stabilization of the world, and in order to satisfy the demand, a requirement of at least 1 trillion dollar will be spent on the energy infrastructure per year.
Fig 1. Primary energy consumption over the world
According to Fig 1, energy demand increases significantly over the past few years and the central of energy consumption moves to Asia Pacific including Japan, China, India and other developing countries, while developed countries in North America, South and Central America and Euro remain in the same level, so to satisfy the increment of demand in Asia Pacific will be the priority mission for BP
英国石油公司的解决方案：能源结构——Solution Proposed by BP --- Energy Mix
The policy of BP to sustainably deal with such increment of demand of energy is to supply an energy mix to publication, which contain the improvement of energy efficiency, as well as developing more efficient fuel product, recommending natural gas as a key of the energy future due to its better efficiency, abundance and lower negative effect to environment (carbon footprint), investment on technology of reducing the carbon footprint and finally, researching on the better performance of alternative energy (biofuel, wind and solar).
Fig 2. Anticipation over the total demand for different energy type
化石燃料——Fossil Fuel
Although an energy mix is recommended by BP to be the solution against the increment of demand in energy resource, fossil fuels are still the dominant resource for at least next 20 years even under the condition of constrain on the carbon emission according to the ‘World Energy Outlook 2009’ anticipated by IEA. As a result of this assumption, fossil fuels will still play an important role or dominate the structure of energy mix in the future.
To deal with such challenge, BP plans on discovering and reserving more one-off energy type such as oil resource, natural gas and producing hard-to-research hydrocarbon, for example the Canadian oil sands project in 2007 as well as a giant oil discovery in the deepwater US Gulf of Mexico in 2009 for oil proved reserves, the onshore projects in US and Canada, offshore developments in UK and Egypt as well as plants of making liquefied natural gas in Trinidad & Tobago and Indonesia for gas production.
Fig 3. Proved reserves of oil over the world in 2007, 2008 & 2009
Figure 4. Proved reserves of natural gas over the world in 2007, 2008 & 2009
Fig 5. Proved reserves of coal over the world in 2005, 2007 & 2009
Fig 6. Distribution of proved reserves for oil in 1989, 1999 and 2009
Fig 7. Distribution of proved reserves for natural gas in 1988, 1998 and 2008
So far primary energy has dominated the energy market since the first evolution and it will keep playing a significant role in the future energy structure due to the report of IEA. However, the future of fossil fuel is not so happy. Fig 3 and Fig 6 show the proved reserves for oil over the world in three different years. Under the circumstance of developing better technology for the improvement of efficiency and exploration to deepwater, the total among of oil proved reserves rise in a certain number by the giant value of oil and natural gas discovered in Gulf of Mexico. By contraries, the proved reserves in Middle East where it is used to believed to be abundant in oil remains stabilization. The proved reserves of coal are in the same situation as well. Although BP proposes to partially replace oil by natural gas due to better efficiency, cleaner and abundance where it is shown in Fig 4, it will eventually come to the end as long as it belongs to primary energy.
It is absolutely correct to develop new technology on better performance of refining and discovering new source on primary resource due to the market pressure, but renewable resource which could last for an absolutely longer time should be paid more attention and investment. Fortunately, that is what BP is doing.
替代能源——Alternative Energy
Besides that one-off energy type utilization, a series of renewable and alternative energy has been invested over $4 billion in low-carbon technologies by BP since 2005. It consists of the development of biofuels, wind, solar and carbon capture and storage.
风能——Wind Power
The wind power business enable BP to build up wind farms in several states such as those in Fowler, Ridge, US Midwest and Texas which could generate enough among of electricity for a city size of Washington DC. In the mean while, the power generation of wind power farm is expected to grow to be 4 times larger (1200MW -> 5000MW).
Fig 6. Development of wind capacity in past few years
The wind power has been significantly improved with annually 30% by BP since the investment on alternative energy started at 2005 and the capacity of it has risen to more than 1200MW by the end of 2009. With a larger capacity of wind power, wind farm could be built in lower wind-force area to obtain sufficient power for the supply.
However, wind farm requires a stabilize wind force and wind direction which limit the location of forming wind farm. According to previous statement on the growth of wind capacity, BP should stay on developing a higher wind power capacity, in the mean while, trying to reduce the limit on the wind farm by delivering a control system to deal with the change of wind direction by adjusting the facing angle of turbine in different season on onshore.
太阳能——Solar Power
BP has been running solar business for more than 35 years with providing security, private installed, long life solar photovoltaic system to customer markets. One of the strategies of BP on solar project is to raise the photovoltaic capacity from 13GW (2008) to 200GW by 2030. Under this circumstance, solar energy will be one of the major roles in the energy mix. The other one is to wide spread the solar system (from private installed to utility scale investors) in OECD countries and also extend to the markets such as China, Italy and numbers of countries in the Middle East where it is possible to provide sufficient solar intensity.
According to the solar business data on BP’s official website, it has well done its job in solar panel installed for personal purpose (roof-top on the house) and for some universities demand in United State and it is about to extend its business to other developed countries where a large energy demand is set like China. However, the solar business style should be adjusted for the oversea plan. Rather than supplying solar panel to individual costumer, BP should choose to co-operate with the native government to build a solar farm in the countryside for the development of solar power for the following reasons. First of all, due to the large number of population in developed cities in China, the structure of buildings are designed to be multiple-floor architectures, so it will be insufficient to supply solar energy by setting up the rooftop solar penal. Secondly, the weather within cities is cloudy due to the negative industrial effect on the environment which will cause insufficient solar intensity. Thirdly, to wide spread solar panel to most families in cities will be in very low efficient and high cost. However by forming a solar farm and using a join power transition wire to join the main power transition could significantly reduce the pressure on primary supply possibly reduce the cost of setting up solar system to cities and improve the efficient of solar power utilization.
新途径---长岛太阳能项目——New approach --- Long Island Solar Project
BP has pronounced a new project of solar energy on 7th February --- Solar Farm in Long Island. Rather than individually installed of solar panel, BP choose to co-operate with MetLife to build a 32MW solar farm to meet the energy needs of Long Island with a 20-year power purchase agreement and to start delivering solar energy at Mid-2011.
The new approach of BP meets my opinion on the development of solar energy, building a solar farm for solar energy delivery rather than serve individual solar system.
生物燃料——Biofuels
Biofuels is another consideration for the alternative sustainable energy for BP to the mix. Generally, biofuels developed by BP are in low cost, low carbon, sustainable and scalable, which means it could barely affect the greenhouse gas levels compared with fossil fuel and more importantly, the feedstock used to generate biofuels are not for food. The most available and attractive biofuel that BP believe today belongs to sugar ethanol, which generate up to 90% greenhouse gas less than any conventional fuel.
Biofuel has an excellent potential on replacing the role of fuel in transportation, or to say to join the contribution on transportation.
Fig. 7 Growth of use of biofuels on transportation
As an anticipation of ‘Tecknon 2006 & BP’, biofuels were expected to be double on the contribution to the market by the end of 2012, and have a total contribution of 8.5% by the end of 2015, which effectively reduce the pressure on the energy for transportation with a result of nearly no growth on the demand of diesel.
However, the negative effect of bringing biofuels to the energy mix is of increasing the food pressure to the world. Biofuels do not only convert from both food and non-food plants, but also occupy that land which could be used as plants for food supply.
To overcome the problem, BP should focus on developing no-food, low waste of land, high unit-quantity and high unit-efficiency of conversion to biofuels product to the market.
法律责任——Legal Responsibility
通用概念——General Concept
The legal responsibility of BP is associated with Health & Safety Law, Environmental Law, Tort (professional and product responsibilities), Contract Law, and Intellectual Property (IP) etc. In this section, the performance related to how BP fulfills its legal responsibility in association with these fields mentioned above in recent years will be investigated. In addition, the legal responsibility of HS&E will be the main focus in this section.
In order to assess how BP fulfills its legal responsibility, the following aspects are considered.
How BP complies with the Laws related to HS&E, IP and Contract etc.?
Have BP fulfilled its corresponding legal responsibility in association with the lawsuits and incidents occurred related to HS&E, IP and Contract etc.?
How BP responds to the suggestions made by authoritative organizations, which aim to improve its performance related to HS&E, IP and Contract etc.?
Legal Responsibility of Tort, Contract Law and Intellectual Property etc
In recent years, BP has done a great job in fulfilling its legal responsibility related to Tort, Contract Law and Intellectual Property etc.
BP has established internal and external mechanisms for employees, business partners, suppliers and vendors to raise any concerns about possible breaches of BP associated with Professional and Product responsibilities, Contract Law and Intellectual Property etc.
For instance, the Open Talk is an independent confidential helpline in which; Employees, contractors or other third parties who are concerned that laws and regulations may be being breached by BP, can get helps.
The amount of Open Talk cases in recent years is shown below in Figure 1
Figure 1 (Amount of Open Talk cases in recent years)
Refer to Figure 1; it is apparent that the amount of Open Talk case continued to decrease in recent years. Therefore, it is believed that BP has gained an improvement in the performance of complying with the laws related to Contract and Intellectual Property, Professional and Product responsibilities etc.
案例分析——Case Study
Lawsuit related to price manipulation in 2006
On 29, Jun, 2006, BP was accused of price manipulation in the US. Regulators alleged that BP America Inc artificially forced up prices of propane by buying up huge propane stocks only to withhold them from the market.
BP said it had admitted propane price manipulation in 2004 and trying to manipulate the price in 2003. BP has agreed to pay $303 in fines.
In addition, In 2007, BP America Inc entered into a three year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the US Department of Justice (DOJ); additionally entered into a consent order with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).An independent Trading Monitor was appointed by the DOJ and the CFTC according to the DPA and the consent order, The Monitor aims to review BP's progress in implementing a trading compliance program. In December 2009, the Monitor indicated that BP continues to comply with the consent order and is making every effort to stay in this status.
In term of BP’s response to this lawsuit, it is apparent that BP takes a positive attitude to minimize the effect of this incident. Therefore, all the facts stated above clearly demonstrate that BP has superiorly fulfilled its legal responsibility for this incident.
健康安全与环境方面的法律责任——Legal Responsibility of HS&E
As the working environment for BP’s employees is extremely dangerous and its products are noxious to both the environment and health; BP states that Safety is its number one priority and it constantly seeks to improve its performance through its procedures, processes and training programs.
BP promises to strictly comply with Health & Safety Law as well as Environment Law, in order to achieve the highest level of HS&E standard. However, several extremely serious incidents related to HS&E occurred in recent years indicates that BP’s performance of complying with the Health & Safety Law and Environment Law is quite disappointed.
According to the UK government watchdog the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), BP has broken vital health-and-safety rules 54 times over the past five years in the UK. For instance, BP was accused of breaching safety standards at its Grangemouth oil refinery in 2007 by the HSE, because BP has failed to conduct “a suitable and sufficient assessment of human factor”.
In the recent years, BP has failed to fulfill its legal responsibility of HS&E. It failed to heed or implement safety recommendations made by authoritative organizations such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); thus led to several serious incidents. Detailed evidences are demonstrated in the following case study.
案例分析——Case Study
Texas City Refinery Explosion
On March 23, 2005, in Texas City, Texas, a fire and explosion occurred at BP's Texas City Refinery which is the third-largest in the United States, results in killing 15 workers and injuring more than 170 others.
The Accident Investigation Report of this incident identified a large number of failings in equipment, risk management, staff management, working culture at the site, maintenance and inspection, and general health and safety assessments which caused this blast. However, numerous failings mentioned in this report had been indicated by several authoritative organizations (OSHA, API) before this expansion; additionally, the corresponding suggestions for fixing these failing also had been recommended to BP before this blast.
As a consequence, BP was charged with criminal violations of federal environmental laws with a US$50 million fine, and has been subject to lawsuits from the victim's families. BP has stated that it has paid more than US$1.6 billion to compensate victims. In addition, OSHA ultimately found more than 300 safety violations and thus charged BP with a US $21 million fine.
Although BP promised to pay enough money to minimize the effects of this disaster and compensate victims, it showed a negative attitude in taking its legal responsibilities related to HS&E. On October 30, 2009, OSHA imposed an $87 million fine on BP; because BP failed to correct safety hazards revealed in the 2005 explosion. In its report, OSHA cited over 700 safety violations. This negative attitude of BP led to another more serious incident occurred in 2010.
墨西哥湾漏油事件——Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
The facts related to Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill are stated in the Introduction of this report which will not be stated here.
On January, 05, 2011, the White House oil spill commission released a final report detailing faults by the companies which cause the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In this report, BP was accused of nine faults which broke the Safety Law, thus led to this oil spill.
It is also believed that BP will be charged with criminal violations of Environmental Law, due to the great damage to the environment, marine and wildlife habitats caused by the oil spill.
In addition, BP’s third quarter 2010 report indicated that BP had faced more than 400 private civil lawsuits resulting from the 20 April 2010 explosions and fire on the semisubmersible rig Deepwater Horizon and resulting oil spill.
The reactions taken by BP for minimizing the effects of this incident are excellent and help BP earn confidence in the public.
Initially, BP promised to take full legal responsibility for the spill. On 16, June 2010, BP agreed to create a $20 billion spill response fund. BP has said it will pay $3 billion in third quarter of 2010 and $2 billion in fourth quarter into the fund followed by a payment of $1.25 billion per quarter until it reaches $20 billion. On 08, September, 2010, among the total 50,000 claims, 44,000 for lost income had been filed; more than10, 000 claims had been paid, totaling nearly $80 million.
These figures mentioned above apparently demonstrate BP has taken a positive attitude in undertaking its corresponding legal responsibilities of this incident. However, it seemed that BP still has not payed full attentions to improving its level of HS&E standard. In the oil spill clean-up process, BP exposed its significant deficiencies in BP’s handling of the health issues facing cleanup workers, which results worker safety issues. In June, 2010, several workers were hospitalized and the Coast Guard recalled all 125 commercial fisherman boats which were used for cleanup.
Suggestions in Association with Legal Responsibility of HS&E
BP should establish a new guideline related to health and safety according to latest Safety & Health Laws, the lessons learnt in those serious disasters occurred recent years and the safety suggestions made by authoritative organizations. This new guideline should guide through all BP’s procedures, processes and training programs, in order to improve the level of safety and health standard and perfectly comply with Safety & Health Law,
In order to comply with Environment Law, new technologies should be applied in BP’s refineries and offshore oil rigs for minimizing the greenhouse gases emission and oil spills.
For the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill incident, BP should commit to pay all legitimate claims for damages resulting from this incident. These claims should include the following aspects.
Claims related to the lost income and business for individuals or organizations such as commercial fishing, seafood processing, dock owners, boat owner, tourism industry, waterfront property owner and restaurant etc.
Claims related to the dead or injured employees and others.
Claims related to the damages to the environment. For instance, the oil spill harmed and killed both endangered and threatened species and may continue to cause damage after the cleanup.
Government claims related to the safety violations and faults which caused this serious incident.
Employees’ claims in association with their own losses related to BP’s poor financial performance (decaying stock price, decreasing profit) due to this serious incident.
总结——Summary:
BP’s survey results have been very encouraging. The objective of this audit report, to suggest change and improvement on their procedures and management strategy, is successfully achieved based on analyzing BP’s performance comprehensively in the past few years. Four aspects--Sustainable Development, Management Techniques, Legal Responsibilities and Professional and Ethical Conduct--were investigated objectively in detail through evaluating BP’s own operating system, discussing case study and proposing suggestion and improvement on its strategy. These issues need to be developed prior to ensure BP’s firm position in the global oil and gas market. In addition to Oil Spills in the Gulf Mexico regarded as a major case to help demonstrate BP’s HS&E performance, legal responsibilities and professional and ethical conduct, other representative cases were discussed corresponding to the respective requirement for each topic. If BP takes serious consideration in implementing policies and management strategy as described in this report, Group 54 is certainly sure that BP will greatly reduce potential accidents and risks, and further advance its achievement. We wish BP all the best in its future endeavours.
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