The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the Death of Ethics

On April 20, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded off the coast of Louisiana. The explosion was so powerful that it sent a fireball into the sky that was visible from as far as thirty-five miles away. Eleven workers were killed and seventeen injured in what became the largest offshore oil spill in United States history. Approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil was spilled out of the Macondo Prospect well and into the environmentally sensitive Gulf of Mexico. The disaster of the Deepwater Horizon can be relevantly compared to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant partial core meltdown, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger or the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion. All of these disasters were not the result of one mistake or one malfunctioning piece of equipment, but rather a lack of ethical decision-making or responsibility by the regulators and administrators charged with preventing such catastrophes from occurring. The post-event investigations of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill found that the United States government agency that was responsible for overseeing and regulating the oil industry was permeated with an ethical disregard for the regulations and professional standards that it was tasked with achieving. In the book “The Responsible Administrator”, author Terry L. Cooper explains how these abuses of power and a culture of unethical conduct can flourish and more importantly, how such unethical behavior can be prevented. Cooper endorses a dynamic “design approach” to ethics for public administrators to implement in both analyzing ethical dilemmas and when making ethical decisions.

The United States Department of the Interior is the federal executive department of the United State government that is d...

... middle of paper ...

... under pressure. Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, responded by reorganizing the Minerals Management Service into three distinct and separate agencies. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is “responsible for the sustainable development of the Outer Continental Shelf’s conventional and renewable energy resources, including resource evaluation, planning, and other activities related to leasing”. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is responsible for “ensuring comprehensive oversight, safety, and environmental protection in all offshore energy activities.” The third agency under Salazar’s reorganization, The Office of Natural Resources Revenue is “responsible for the royalty and revenue management function including the collection and distribution of revenue, auditing and compliance, and asset management.” (Department of the Interior, 2010)