1. Do you think environmental costs and benefits can be accurately measured?
2. Do issues such as the environment help management accountants become more strategically important members of the organization?

According to a US Congressional enquiry, this accident apparently partly resulted from local decisions within the oil multinational BP and its contractors to save relatively immaterial costs by cutting corners in oil exploration safety measures (National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill & Offshore Drilling, 2011). The ensuing accident might have been prevented had more robust safety measures been in place. It directly killed 11 workers employed on the oil drilling exploration rig. It also directly caused large scale oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico and directly incurred large economic costs for BP and its partners in extinguishing the fire, stopping the oil leak and cleaning up some of the spilt oil.
These direct (and fairly immediate) external impacts on social, environmental and economic factors themselves then caused many other negative impacts in these areas. Thus, for example, the oil pollution killed many fish, prevented many fishermen going to sea to catch fish for a period and damaged the tourist industry in states close to the oil spill (National Commission on the BP Deep-water Horizon Oil Spill & Offshore Drilling, 2011).
The negative environmental impact from the oil spill therefore caused other social and economic impacts on communities in coastal areas close to the oil spill. Several of these and other impacts then fed through into further economic impacts for BP and its contractors who were required to pay compensation to those affected and who suffered reputation dam-age. In total, BP reported costs of US$40.9 billion in 2010 associated with the Gulf oil spill.