BP Oil Spill, Essay Example

Overall, the BP oil spill had an impact on the supply chain of oil worldwide. Immediately after the oil spill occurred, BP reported that people would not see an impact on the supply chain once the company is able to successfully deliver its product to land. Despite this promise, the oil spill impacted the availability of the oil product due to both the oil wasted in the spill and the amount of resources that the company needed to pool towards cleaning up the impacted areas (Fox News, 2010).

The major worry when this spill occurred is that by decreasing the amount of oil product available, the market would be forced to raise its price. People who believe that BP worked hard to pool its resources to clear the spill give significant credit to the procurement branch of the company’s supply chain. In a limited amount of time, they were able to redirect their current operations and employees to the areas where they were needed most (Handfield, 2010). This is interesting to their supply chain organization overall because this indicates that they are able to restructure their company quickly, demonstrating excellent and adaptation organizational abilities.

BP’s ability to reorganize its entire supply chain includes its ability to provide transportation of the oil from other operational rigs and to allocate some additional transportation vehicles to the gulf coast. Although critics of BP projected that oil prices would raise significantly and remain this way for a while, we did not see this prediction come to fruition. BP was able to quickly deliver the oil to the shore across the world from the other rigs. Although the spill itself was unfortunate, it is commendable that BP was able to restructure its supply chain operations quickly and in a manner that allowed them to deliver help to the Gulf Coast to clean the spill simultaneously.

References

Fox News. (2010). Spill Oil to Seep Into Supply Chain as BP Sells It. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/12/spill-oil-seep-supply-chain-bp-sells/

Handfield. (2010). The BP Oil Spill: The Critical Role of Procurement in Managing this Disaster. Retrieved from http://scm.ncsu.edu/blog/2010/05/18/the-bp-oil-spill-the-critical-role-of-procurement-in-managing-this-disaster