DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL (ALSO KNOWN AS BP OIL SPILL)

INTRODUCTION
Deepwater Horizon Spill also known as BP Oil Spill is one of the worst industrial disaster that
mankind has seen which started on 20th of April, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The extent can be
realized by the fact that around 4.9 million barrels of oil was spilled. The magnitude of aquatic life
damages and the compensation that was offered by the company was one of the largest in the
history. As of February 2013, the fiasco has costed the company US$ 45.2 billion. British
Petroleum was entrusted with a mammoth task of cleaning the spillage area and faced a herculean
task of improving its image. The strategies that were adopted to meet the same is worth doing
research.

BP OIL SPILL

Recall strategy of spilled oil will include strategies adopted by BP in the containment, collection
of oil and use of dispersants like microbes that feed on oil. It can be further classified into short
term and long term strategies. Also, we will be looking into the image recovery strategies. In a
nutshell, the research will cover all the aspects of strategies adopted by the company to mitigate
the impact.

The topics that will be covered in the research will not be limited to marketing strategy as such.
But it will cover multi-dimensional aspect of the same. For example:

What were the operational strategies used to recall/recollect the spilled oil?
What were the marketing strategies for image recovery?

OPERATIONAL STRATEGIES USED TO RECALL/RECOLLECT THE SPILLED OIL

The whole operational procedure can be classified into two categories:

Efforts to stem the flow of oil.

Containment, collection and use of dispersants.
EFFORTS TO STEM THE FLOW OF OIL:

Short term efforts: First, BP unsuccessfully attempted to close the blowout preventer
valves on the wellhead with remotely operated underwater vehicles. Next, it placed a 125-
tonne (280,000 lbs.) containment dome over the largest leak and piped the oil to a storage
vessel. While this technique had worked in shallower water, it failed here when gas
combined with cold water to form methane hydrate crystals that blocked the opening at the
top of the dome.

USE OF DOME
Consideration of using explosives: There were citations of successful Soviet Union
attempts to seal off runaway gas wells with nuclear explosions. But, BP ruled out this
option.
CONTAINMENT, COLLECTION AND USE OF DISPERSANTS:

Containment: Containment booms spanning over a length of 1300 kilometers were

installed that acted as enclosure for the spilled oil; or/and acted as barriers to protect
marshes, mangroves, shrimp, crab, oyster ranches and other ecologically and biological
sensitive areas. These booms extended in between 18 inches to 48 inches above and below
the surface of water and were effective in calm water conditions. Including one-time use
sorbent booms, a total of 13,300,000 feet (4,100 km) of booms were deployed.

USE OF CONATAINMENT BOOMS

 Also, the Louisiana Barrier Plan was developed to protect the coastline of Louisiana by
constructing a series of barrier islands.
Use of Corexit Dispersant: The spill also came into limelight because of the volume and
scale of the use of corexit dispersant. The application methods of same were noteworthy
too. A total of 1.84 million US gallons of dispersants were used. Out of these around
771,000 US gallons of dispersants were released at the wellhead. Subsea injection had
never previously been tried but due to the spill's unprecedented nature BP together with
USCG and EPA decided to use it. The use of dispersants was described as the most
effective method of mitigating the impact.

A PLANE SPRAYING COREXIT DISPERSANT OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO

Removal: The process of removing spilled oil basically involves three methodologies and
they are combustion, offshore filtration and collection for processing at later stages.
According to USCG, approximately 33 million US gallons of affected/tainted water was
recovered which included 5 million US gallons of spilled oil. In an official statement made
by BP, the company said 826,800 barrels of oil has been recovered or flared. One
calculation states that about 5% of the leaked oil was burned at the surface and 3% was
skimmed.

OIL BURNS IN A CONTROLLED FIRE OIL SKIMMING VESSELS IN THE SEA

Also, from April to mid-July 2010, 411 controlled in-situ fires remediated approximately
265,000 barrels of oil.
 Skimmers were used to collect oil from water. In total, 2063 skimmers were used for the
purpose. After the well was captured and controlled, shore and coastline cleaning were the
tasks on priority list. The two most affected types of coastline were sandy beaches and
marshes. Sandy beaches were cleaned with the help of following techniques:
1. Sifting sand
2. Removing tar balls
3. Digging out tar mats manually or by using mechanical devices
And, marshes were cleaned with the help of following techniques:
1. Vacuum and pumping
2. Low pressure flush
3. Vegetation cutting
4. Bioremediation
Oil Eating microbes
PUBLIC RELATION STRATEGIES AND HOW TO TACKLE THEM

Consider the ethics of social channels. BP makes a regular habit of turning off the
comment function on social media channels and not allowing other views to be shared on
its profiles. This is presumably to help control the message and avoid issues of liability
but how should Facebook or YouTube react to this? Twitter said it wouldnt touch the
satirical account mocking the oil company, but in early June it asked the author to make it
clear they were not connected to BP. Are social networks simply platforms anyone can use
to distribute a message, even if that message isnt 100 percent accurate or there is no room
for response or debate?
One vs. many spokespeople. How would a Zappos, IBM, Starbucks or Dell (to use a few
oft-cited examples of more open and connected corporate cultures) handle a BP-like
situation with their brands? Classic communications strategy suggests to follow BPs lead
and anoint a single spokesperson. But these go-to models of crisis control are challenged
when hundreds speak for a brand, even if informally. The Internet is an organizational tool.
If an organization facing a crisis is socially connected and understands the networks they
have created, theyll know what to do. The clearest way forward is to ask your online team
members to follow some basic guidelines about when and how to respond in the specific
situation at hand. The three main tasks for the formal and informal social media teams are:
Thank people, correct facts, and share updated information. Remember to keep responses
short, accurate and polite, and to link to a place where aggregated information about the
crisis can be found. Remind your online team not to apologize for the incident, never to
debate or engage in defense or explanations.
Tactics are not directly transferable across mediums. A common refrain from many
analysts is that BP ripped pages from an old playbook to use on the new field of
communications. Good communicators understand that communications strategy must be
tool-agnostic, but that tactics are tool-specific. In other words, BP used classic
 communications methods in new mediums. This dissonance was immediately seized upon
by organizations like Greenpeace and the satirical BP account on Twitter.
The old paradigm of broadcasting to persuade is being challenged. BPs
communicators took to YouTube and created what seemed like television ads. They would
have been better served by attempting to stimulate a conversation, providing a realistic
portrait of the work being done, or engaging in a live, viewer-centric Q&A session. Overall,
the BP website and spokespeople lacked a human or colloquial tone.
Sometimes you just cant win. BP has failed to realize that sometimes trying to win PR
battles actually results in an organization losing the overall communications war. Mitch
Joel, president of Twist Image and the author of Six Pixels of Separation suggested in
his Vancouver Sun/Montreal Gazette column that perhaps BP never really had a chance.
If the basis of social media is based on trust and credibility, how can BP be expected to
engage and truly connect? he wrote. For now, its hopeless. But that was probably also
true long before a drop of oil ever touched the Gulf of Mexico.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bp-oil-spill
http://ocean.si.edu/gulf-oil-spill
https://www.britannica.com/event/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill-of-2010
http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability/environment/oil-spill-
preparedness-and-response.html
https://bp-oil-spill.wikispaces.com/Measures+Taken+To+Clean+Up