British Petroleum (BP) is one of the largest international oil and Gas Company. BP headquartered in London, England, is one of the world's common biggest and leading international companies. BP provides its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday item. It was established in 1908, after a long difficult search in rugged part of Persia, they found oil. BP now has operations in approximately 80 countries.
BP has been involved in several major environmental and safety incidents. Among them were the 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion, Britain's largest oil spill referred to as the wreck of Torrey Canyon, the 2006 Prudhoe Bay oil spill, the largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The focus will be on the latter, the Deep Horizon oil spill: the largest accidental release of oil into marine waters in history. On April 20, 2010, an explosion and sinking of one of their oil rigs called the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles southeast of the Mississippi River delta caused one of the worst oil spill in U.S history. This oil spill resulted in severe environmental, health and economic consequences and serious legal and public relations repercussions for BP. Eleven workers lost their lives and experts claimed the oil spill covered about 42 miles of the ocean floor of the coast Louisiana. .
The Ocean Portal Team in their article, 'Gulf Oil Spill', states, "by the time the leak was capped and stopped 87 days later, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil had leaked into the Gulf" (July 15, 2010). It was also reported that about 130 miles by 70 miles area was covered by oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico . This accident caused about 6,107 Birds, 609 sea Turtles and 100 Dolphins deaths. This spilled disaster affected almost around 2100 to 4200 gallons of pollutants across a 7000 square feet area (The Week, 2011).
