B

BP’S 2010 DEEPWATER HORIZON

OIL SPILL
Crisis Communication Management

Strategic Communication

Fatima Fofana
Crisis Communication Management

Introduction

British Petroleum (BP), is one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. BP is a

British multinational located in London, and operates in about 80 countries. BP has been

involved in many environmental and safety issues, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in

2010.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the largest maritime oil spill in history. It caused

great environmental, health, economic damages, and serious communication crisis for BP. The

accident was caused by an explosion, which killed 11 people and injured 17, and 780 million

gallons of oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from April 20, 2010 to the end of the sealing of

the oil barrels. The accident caused environmental and economic damages to the US because

most US coastlines were affected, but also important economic and reputation damage to BP.

According to Wolf and Mejri (2013), financially, “on June 25, 2010, BP shares lost 7%

and reached their lowest level in the London Stock Exchange. Plus, their stock market valuation,

estimated at $182 billion on April 20, went down to $ 89 billion on July 2, 2010”. Also, on the

reputational level, BP’s reputation did not only drop in the US but also worldwide. As stated by

Covalence, an organization tracking multinationals ethical reputation, BP’s reputation

considerably dropped as the spill kept progressing and no solutions were found. “So BP received

a grade E, the lowest grade attributed by Covalence in a ranking used by ethical investors” (Wolf

and Mejri, 2013).

Also, a month after the incident, a PR Week/One Poll’s survey showed that the public

thought that BP had not tried hard enough to stop the oil spill (Wolf and Mejri, 2013). The

reputation drop continued even a year after the incident, as many polls and surveys showed that

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BP was ranked between the last US companies and was still perceived by Americans as a

company with a bad reputation.

Moreover, as Wolf and Mejri (2013) claimed, there were many calls of boycott against

BP’s products, there were even a large Facebook community for the BP boycott. And a fake

Twitter account named after BP “@BPGlobalPR”, which sent information on Twitter about the

oil spill and had more Twitter followers than the original BP Twitter account. Finally, “BP was

confronted with many claims and lawsuits from fishers, hotels, restaurants and NGOs like the

Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and other animal protection and conservation organizations”

(Wolf and Mejri, 2013).

To minimize the damages and recover their reputation, BP started a crisis communication

strategy. However, there were many diverging opinions as to whether communication between

BP and its stakeholders where well-handled during the crisis. This paper will first discuss the

concept of crisis communication, then go through the steps of BP’s communication crisis

strategy, and finally analyze and discuss why or why not the case was well handled.

Crisis Communication

According to the Business Dictionary, “crisis communication consists of the effort a

company takes to communicate with the different stakeholders and shareholders when an

unexpected event occurs, and when that event can damage the company’s reputation”. In The

Handbook of Crisis Communication, Coombs (2010) defines a crisis as “the perception of an

unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously

impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes” (Coombs, 2010, p.19).

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Crisis are inevitable, no matter where one lives or work, disasters or events that can

negatively affect a government or a company’s reputation are countless. Therefore, it is

important for a company to know how to responsibly manage crisis through appropriate channel

of communication, because the company’s reputation and how stakeholders will perceive the

company depends on it. However, no matter how prepared a company might be before a crisis or

how well the company respond after the crisis, there could still be important financial and

reputation damage. So crisis communication, just like other PR practices are very important, and

fundamental for the success of a company

BP’s crisis communication

Before the April 2010 oil spill that became the largest oil spill in the history, BP have had

many other crisis. According to Wolf and Mejri (2013):

In December 1965, the BP oil rig Sea Gem collapsed while it was

being moved and thirteen crew died. On March 23, 2005, BP’s

Texas City Refinery exploded and caught fire. Fifteen workers

have died and more than 170 others have been injured. BP was

then subject to lawsuits from the victims’ families and was charged

with criminal violations of federal environmental laws. One year

later, following an oil spill in Alaska, BP discovered extensive

pipeline corrosion and faced serious operational issues. The

company also paid about $ 20 million as environmental fines

(Wolf and Mejri, 2013, p.51).

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After those crisis, BP decided to be more than a petroleum company by endorsing environmental

causes, and changed its name to “Beyond petroleum”, with the green and yellow sunburst logo in

2000. The advertising and public relations campaign for this change positively helped the brand

which went from “4 per cent in 2000 to 67 per cent and became a model for corporate social

responsibility” (wolf and Mejri, 2013). “The environmental friendly image and renewable energy

activities helped BP rank high in the top 100 Global Companies” (wolf and Mejri, 2013).

After the April 2010 oil spill, BP’s past reputation as a company that lacks safety

resurfaced. To help cure their reputation, BP made several crisis communication steps.

- The first step they took in their communication crisis strategy was an interview. BP’s

former CEO Tony Hayward confessed that “BP’s contingency plans were inadequate”

and that BP “was not prepared” for the crisis and was “making it up day to day”. He then

added that BP was not prepared for the large media coverage and he felt “demonized and

vilified”.

- Then, in an attempt to fix their reputation, BP launched a PR campaign. The PR

campaign contained apologetic ads in which the CEO apologized for the disastrous event

and took “full responsibility for cleaning up the spill in the Gulf”. They also had print

campaigns in the main newspapers.

- Also, the CEO downplayed the spill “its environmental impact would likely be very

modest” and said that it is “relatively tiny” compared to how big the ocean is. He made

statements like “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I’d like my life

back”, and returned to his personal fun activities, which appeared in the news.

- In addition, the CEO flew to several countries to reassure shareholders and get investors

so the company would not lose shares to its competitors.

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- BP tried to minimize the amount of information people where receiving, they made

workers sign contracts stating that they will not produce “news releases, marketing

presentations or any other public statements”, they refused the reporters access to

information.

- Finally, BP claimed that only 1,000 barrels were spilling daily but rectified later on to

5,000 barrels. They were also accused of covering the oil with clean sand to minimize the

effects. They retaliated saying that “at no time has clean sand been used to cover or bury

oil or oiled sand” and that “Storms that have passed through the area have deposited sand

on the beach and eroded it again exposing oil buried by sediments brought in by the

weather”.

Analyze and Discussion

According to Bernstein (2004), crisis communication has ten steps. First, “anticipate the

crisis, second, identify the crisis communication team, third, identify and train spokespersons,

fourth, train the designated spokesperson, fifth, establish a notification and monitoring system,

sixth, identify and know the stakeholders, seventh, develop holding statements, eighth, assess the

crisis situation, ninth, finalize and adapt key messages and finally tenth, post crisis analysis”

(Bernstein, 2004). In this paper, we will elaborate on steps one to seven, compared to the crisis

communication BP had during their oil spill crisis.

The first step of Bernstein’s (2004) 10 steps of crisis communication is about anticipating

crisis. Which consist in brainstorming about potential crisis the company can face and finding

appropriate response plans. As stated in BP’s crisis communication steps, BP did not prepare any

crisis communication in anticipation to the 2010 crisis that occurred. The former CEO said in his

interview that BP “was not prepared” for the crisis and was “making it up day to day”. It was the
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first failure of their crisis communication strategy, because if they had anticipated, they would

have probably been able to avoid the situation or worst case scenario, be more prepared with an

actual plan to deal with the situation.

The second step is about identifying the crisis communication team. “Ideally, the

organization's CEO will lead the team, with the firm's top public relations executive and legal

counsel as his or her chief advisers” (Bernstein, 2004). In BP’s case, it is safe to say that there

were not an effective crisis communication team. Because BP decided to launch a large PR

campaign, ran numerous ads and print campaigns in newspapers to apologize and take

responsibility. The money spent on this campaign raised eyebrows because public opinion

thought it could’ve helped cleaning the oil spill and indemnify the victims. That move made

BP’s reputation even more fragile because they received criticism from stakeholders and even

the president Obama.

The third and the fourth steps are about identifying and designating a trained

spokesperson. In the crisis, BP’s spokesperson was their former CEO Tony Hayward, either BP

chose the wrong spokesperson, or they failed to train him accordingly, because in most of his

interviews, he worsen BP’s reputation. He downplayed the situation right at the beginning,

appeared as uncaring, arrogant, and his yacht race during the oil crisis made him the most hated

man in America. BP then had to announce that he would be replaced in the upcoming months.

The fifth and sixth steps are about establishing a notification and monitoring system, and

identifying and knowing stakeholders. As we talked about earlier in the paper, BP had no direct

daily contact with the public. Their twitter page had less followers than the fake Twitter account

created after the oil spill occurred. And BP did nothing to attract focus from the fake Twitter

page which ridiculed the crisis, and did not have a personal website where stakeholders could go

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for information and updates about the situation, which probably worsened the situation. Also, BP

generally turned off the comment function on their social media, making interaction quite

impossible with stakeholders. Interacting with stakeholders, sending direct information to them

about the advancement of the crisis without downplaying or trying to hide information, and

monitoring information circulating about BP to better assess them would have been beneficial to

BP. However, nothing where done to keep and sustain the good relations BP had with NGOs and

environmental groups before the oil spill crisis. Before the crisis, BP were considered an

environmental friendly company and scored high in the top 100 of Global Companies.

The seventh step is about developing holding statements. Holding statements are

“messages designed for use immediately after a crisis breaks, can be developed in advance to be

used for a wide variety of scenarios to which the organization is perceived to be vulnerable,

based on the assessment you conducted in Step 1 of this process” (Bernstein, 2004). Like

previously said, BP would’ve benefited from an elaborated plan and scenario constructed prior to

the crisis.

Conclusion

Beside the crisis communication steps mentioned by Bernstein (2004) that could explain

the failure of BP’s oil spill crisis communication, BP also did not use certain crisis

communication criteria mentioned by Combs in his 2007 academic research about protecting an

organization’s reputation during a crisis. As Combs’ 2007 SCCT model explained, when a crisis

occurs, the company should “analyze the initial crisis responsibility”, which is about analyzing

the degree to which stakeholders think the company is responsible for the crisis. Then “take into

account crisis history”, which is about whether or not similar crisis happened in the past and how

stakeholders reacted to the previous crisis. And finally, “acknowledge prior relational

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reputation”, which is about how unfavorable prior relational reputation could make stakeholders

attribute total responsibility of the actual crisis to the company (Combs, 2007, p.166-167).

In the case of the 2010 oil spill, BP did not follow these criteria to implement their crisis

communication plan, if they did, they would have used a rebuild communication strategy,

followed by a mortification, which consist in accepting responsibility, apologizing, confessing

and begging for forgiveness. BP would’ve probably reduced their reputation damage using that

communication strategy. Using Combs’ SCCT model criteria, the first criteria in the BP crisis

compared to the BP oil spill crisis shows that the attribution of responsibility to BP was really

high, because they were held accountable for the oil spill, their actions caused the oil spill. Then,

like we earlier explained, analyzing the second criteria, BP had three previous crisis almost of

the type, which endangered human lives, caused deaths and damaged their reputation in the past.

And according to the last criteria, these previous crisis did not help BP’s reputation with the

2010 oil spill. The previous crisis made BP’s bad reputation and endangering workers and lives

attributes resurface.

Instead of using the rebuild communication strategy from the beginning, BP used denial, tried to

blame third parties, minimized the extent of the crisis by downplaying events, and concealed

information about the crisis from the public. However, as the crisis kept blowing out of

proportion, BP then tried the apology campaign and promised to compensate the victims and

take care of cleaning the mess. Applying these methods came late and the situation were handled

the wrong way.

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References

Bernstein, J. 2004. The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications. Crisis Response, prevention,

planning and, Training, 106. From

http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/docs/the10stepsofcrisiscommunications

Coombs, W. T. Parameters of Crisis Communication. The Handbook of Crisis Communication.

MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2010. 17-53.

Crisis communication. N.d. Business Dictionary. Retrieved April 16, 2015. From

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/crisis-communication.html

Lenci, D. and Mullane, J. 2010. COMMENT: Communicating with the public: how BP told the

Macondo story. Oild and Gas Journal. From

http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-108/issue-46/general-interest/comment-
communicating-with-the-public.html

McClam, E. and Weber, H. R. 2010. BP’s failures made worse by PR mistakes. Associated

Press.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37647218/ns/business-world_business/t/bps-failures-made-
worse-pr-mistakes/#.VTAJ65P2etA

Wolf, D.D. and Mejri, M. 2013. Crisis communication failures: The BP Case Study.

International Journal of Advances in Management and Economics. Vol.2. Issue 2. 48-

56.