BP's profit dive

Last week on our L6 Science and Industry module we received a guest speaker from BASF Chemicals Ltd, Michael Boswell (EHS Process and Safety Uk and Ireland) who gave our students an insight into corporate responsibility in the chemical industry. An example used as still the biggest corporate 'pay-out' was the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexicio from the Deepwatwer Horizon spill. Last week BP posted profits of £2.28bn - less than half of the 2015 figure of £4.7bn and it seems still that the company is adding to the £50bn bill faced so-far for the spill. It seems so much like a text-book lesson for all energy enterprises as to why you can't cut corners. Yes, the business is facing other factors with it's downgrading of profits, but one thing is true in all of this: human lives matter.