"The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis Brief 1THE BP OIL SPILL - MACONDO BLOWOUT INCIDENT BRIEFBy <Student’s Name>The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis BriefProfessorUniversityUniversity LocationDate The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis Brief 2IntroductionThis brief aims to investigate the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 inregards to proper crisis planning, communication and management to ensure smooth businesscontinuity after such a critical incidence. The notion that crises have a recognisable lifecycle is aconstant theme that is quite common in crisis management literature (Coombs 2011).Seymour and Moore (2005) suggest that there are two types of crises: the Cobra crisisand the Python Crisis. The Cobra crisis is a crisis that occurs suddenly and that the company hasno chance to foresee. The Python, also known as the slow-burning crisis, on the other hand, is acrisis that develops over a longer periods (Moore & Seymour 2005).British Petroleum, commonly referred to as BP, is a global leader in oil and gasexploration and supply. It was founded in the early 1900s where it was then referred to as theAnglo-Persian Oil Company. This was because it was a company established in Britain andwhose main activity was exploring Persian oil fields. The company, which has its headquarters inLondon, operates in more than 80 countries and employs over 80,000 employees globally. Thecompany aims to be responsible in a competitive environment and be recognised as apowerhouse for progress (BP 2012).At around 10 pm on 10 April 2010, there was an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oilrig which ended the lives of 11 people, injured over 15 others, and resulted in one of the largestmarine oil spills in about 2 decades. The oil rig later sunk after having been aflame for over oneand a half days. The spillage was estimated to be over 5,000 barrels in a period of 87 days. Theenvironmental impact of this crisis is yet to be established but scientists estimate it will be acouple of decades before a conclusive report on the consequences can be released (CNN 2012). The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis Brief 3A crisis can be defined as the occurrence of an event which disrupts the normal operationof an organization. If not properly managed, a crisis will ruin the company reputation and lead togreat losses. A crisis does not necessarily have to be sudden as it may occur over time. This is asin the case of BP where the spillage had been occurring for 87 days which can therefore bedescribed as a python crisis (Miller & Heath 2004).The BP Oil Spill was a preventable crisis based on the report written by the Nationalcommission as well as its internal report. The presumption is that BP could have been sufferingfrom faulty cultural rationalization judging from its complacency to the early warning signshighlighted by their engineers (Mitroff & Pauchant 1990). The report cited poor management,human and technical and engineering design errors as the root cause of the accident. Otherplayers that were found responsible for the rig include Transocean and Halliburton though to alesser extent. Since the crisis is yet to be fully resolved, BP still needs a dynamic and active crisismanagement plan to avoid subsequent occurrences (BBC 2012).Corporate communication is essential in crisis management and planning. Crisis planningand management are all elements of the public relations department in the organization. Thedepartment will take care of all communication aspects in an organization, including ensuringthat good communication is maintained with the company’s stakeholders, as well as themaintenance of a good company reputation among other things. Stakeholders are individuals orentities that are directly or indirectly influenced by the ruling made by an organization. Thecompanies stakeholders were therefore affected by the BP oil spillage thus need for proper crisismanagement and planning. There is therefore evident that the public relations department did notmaintain good crisis communication thus the BP oil spill crisis (Cornelissen 2011). The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis Brief 4Crisis response and the crisis management plan from BP are discussed, to ascertainwhether the elements in the plan have been inculcated in their responses to the oil spill. It is notpossible to verify with absolute certainty that BP had a crisis plan since they did not divulge anyinformation to substantiate this. It can however be determined, through its responses, whether ithad implemented a crisis a plan or not. It will not be possible to look into all aspects of the crisismanagement plan due to limited information and the essay requirement constraints (Coombs2011).The primary phase of the crisis preparation procedure is the assessment of vulnerabilities.Crisis situations are present in every industry but vary in magnitude dependent on the scale ofoperations. The pre-crisis preparation procedure involves the following steps: diagnosingpotential vulnerabilities, reviewing crisis types, selection and training of a crisis managementteam (CMT), selecting and training, a spokesperson for the crisis management team, developinga crisis management plan (CMP) and finally a thorough review of the communication system(Coombs 2011).Coombs (2011) further suggests that a company must initially identify vulnerabilities andrate them. Since BP is an established oil and gas company of international repute, an Oil spillincident should not have taken them by surprise. In this light, a potential oil spill should havebeen included in BP’s crisis management and preparation plan. The damage to the reputation ofBP would have been quite adverse since an oil spill falls under the preventable crisis cluster andnot accidental cluster in the industry in which BP is established. In fact, the dip in its share priceafter the incident is evidence of the perception of the investing public.Their CMP may or maynot have covered scenarios such as background information and possible responses for effective The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis Brief 5handling of such disasters. From the incident timeline, it took about 87 days and a loss of over5000 barrels for the measures they had put in place to be fully effective (CNN 2010).The four stages of CMP are equally crucial and are all geared towards ensuring aseamless return to normalcy for the business. By incorporating well thought out and tested crisisplans, a business ensures that the risk of business failure is strongly reduced or eliminatedentirely. This is done through the consideration of different crisis types and scenarios and thepotential responses to each of these cases. This ensures that an organization is adequatelyprepared with optimal responses to counter any eventuality. The crisis situation can be brokendown into three subcategories: pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis. The three stages are equallycrucial in the crisis communication process which helps mitigate its adverse effects since theresponse is evaluated and implemented on this strength. Since crisis situations are asunpredictable as they are unique, some schools of thought argue that it is relevant to plan forsuch occurrences through crisis management planning. It is further argued that it is impossible tocover all the potential threat aspects of a crisis situation (Coombs 2011).The other school of thought submits that the overall crisis plan is the same for all crisissituations and the crisis specific CMP could be very instrumental in the implementation ofeffective responsesHaving discussed that, BP should be able to have a relatively quick response time to anygiven crisis if they have developed and implemented a CMP. The first step in establishingwhether they had crisis plan will be to look at the response time of the crisis message. Amongthe very first messages that was sent out by the company was the press release stating that ‘BP The BP Oil Spill - Macondo Blowout Crisis Brief 6Initiates Response to Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill’ which was relayed on the second day after thend explosion on 22 April 2012 (BP 2012). It carried information about the actions taken to impedethe oil spill together with a little amount of information on the actual crisis. The initiatives by BPwere substantially exhaustive and the information provided was relatively detailed which couldlead one to suppose that it had been prepared before the crisis took place. The following twosteps that the crisis plan encompasses are the selection and training of a team to oversee the crisisand the selection of a spokesperson. The CEO, Tony Hayward was evidently the primaryspokesperson as he was quoted in all the communication relating to the crisis. The third and allimportant step is the development of the crisis management plan (CMP). One does not need toget evidence of all parts of the written CMP in order to establish that the corporation hadinstituted one. The swiftness of the response team could act as a good indicator that a well laidout crisis plan had been prepared in advance. As earlier mentioned in the press release, BPinformed the public of their strategy to curb the oil spill which may be further evidence of a wellprepared business continuity plan (BCP). This is usually activated by the CMP when triggeredby events such as the oil spill crisis.BP’s response to the crisis and its communication in the process is testament that itdeeply values its reputation. A business builds reputation capital since management appreciatesthat they may need it in the future. An incident or crisis such as the BP oil spill will most likelyerode a firm’s reputation capital (Alsop 2004, p. 17).The final procedure in crisis planning is the communication systems review. Effectivecrisis communication is doomed to lead to the effective management of a crisis thus preventingthe threats that come with a crisis. A crisis control hub is an essential part of thiscommunications system. There is therefore need for the company to ascertain it has the correct "