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Oil spill lands behemoth BP in a Gulf of mess
by Jamie Anderson - May 6, 2010 - comments
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, caused by a ruptured well owned by BP, has terrorized the inhabitants of Louisiana, where the slick is expected to make a landfall sooner or later.
Different experts and media agencies are calling the oil spilling out of the BP oil well by different names. Some refer to it as the "the Gulf oil spill," while others term it as the "the Deepwater Horizon spill". Some have even referred to it as the "Gulf Coast disaster."
Among this difference in nomenclature, there is no difference in opinion as to who is to be blamed for this man-made disaster. All fingers squarely point to the owner of the well, BP
So much so, that the President Barack Obama has referred to the gushing oil as the "the BP oil spill."
The name game
The adage ‘what’s in a name?’ does not hold water in the present context. For whatever has happened and whatever will happen will go down in the history books as one of the biggest, or may be the biggest, disaster in the U.S sea shores.
The incident has already damaged the reputation of behemoth BP, formerly known as British Petroleum. BP is wary of the fact that its name may be permanently associated with the disaster and is therefore careful not to invoke its name in regard to the spill.
"We refer to it as Gulf of Mexico response," claims Andrew Gowers, the company's spokesman. http://bp.com, BP's Web site avoids any linkage, calling it "the spill" or "Gulf of Mexico response" or "BP's MC252 response.”
While the company, either due to corporate social responsibility or due to environmental concerns may hope that the extent of damage is minimized, it would also go an extra mile to ensure that its name is delinked from the disaster.
The blame game
In a series of interviews, BP's chief Tony Hayward took on the mantle of the cleaning up of the slick onto his company. The chief however, pointed a finger towards somebody else when it came to taking responsibility for the unfortunate incident.
"This wasn't our accident. This was a drilling rig operated by another company. It was their people, their systems, their processes,” he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
“We are responsible not for the accident, but we are responsible for the oil and for dealing with it and for cleaning the situation up," maintained Hayward.
Hayward has Hobson’s choice to put the blame on others failing which his company would attract the ire of the general public.
All stakeholders would have their eyes on Hayward and hope that he manages to defend BP's reputation against a surge of criticism from politicians and environmentalists.
"We've never seen him in action doing something like this ... He has got to make sure that BP doesn't fall out of favor with the U.S. government," suggests Coin Morton, fund manager at Rensburg Fund Management.