The practice of news reporting is changing due to the advancement of technology, and so is the crisis management (as well as the creation and delivery of news). This week I am going to share with you an unsuccessful case of corporate crisis management. In this case, the company solely focused on the relationship management with the traditional media sources. Those traditional resources chose to narrow their report of the crisis because of the crisis event happened far from their major audience and were lacking of relevancy with them. However, the overlooked social media channels with its strong technology support and multimedia reports expressed to the world such event and, to some extent, exposed the event in a more serious fashion.
On August 21, 2009, a Thai owned oil company PTTEP’s production well suffered a dramatic well-control accident. The accident occurred in an area known as the Montara Oil Field in the Timor Sea, more than 200km northwest of the Kimberley coastline, Australia. According to PTTEP, the well began pouring oil and gas into the Timor Sea at a rate of between 300 and 400 barrels a day, and three failed attempts have been made to plug the leaking well till Oct 22 (eight weeks) according to news.com.au, and a fourth attempt to plug the well has been delayed and will be made on Oct 28 according to Australia Network News, Oct 27, 2009.
Although compared with Exxon Valdez oil spill case, the leaking and polluting scale is much smaller in Montara case, several new features of this crisis in organization responses, stakeholder involvement, media coverage, and information strategy indicate that the crisis is going worse (for the leaking perhaps, but the organization is for sure).Urgent crisis management measures should be taken in order not to make this “small scale” crisis as notorious as Exxon Valdez case.
Stakeholder Analysis: Out-of-Sight Out-of-Mind Syndrome is Brewing a Crisis Storm
Australia government and PTTEP Company: complacent to the issue
Power: both sides have the power (the former authorized the latter the right of offshore drill); Legitimacy: it has been questioned by Senator Brown: “West Atlas spill [this Montara spill] should force a reassessment of the proposed Gorgon gas project [another ongoing seadrill project] off the Pilbara coast,” given the current uncontrollable situation of Montara spill;Willingness to confront: since the leaking site is off the coast of Darwin, off the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and the area is also with scarce previous studies of marine life and with no baseline survey of the vulnerability of adjacent ecosystems or marine wildlife by the company or its predecessors, Australia government “is showing signs of complacency over the seriousness of the oil slick and the issues it might pose for marine life.” (Greg Hunt)
Traditional Media vs. Social Media: Different degree of passion in reporting
Agenda setting role of media is apparent when comparing this case with Exxon Valdez spill. The out-of-sight out-of-mind syndrome appears in the major western media community, when dealing with Motara spill crisis. I have searched the news about Motara leak/PTTEP/Timor Sear spill in CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and NBC news site, there are very few reports about the crisis. Most of these sites just quote some of the PTTEP newsletter or government statement. On the contrary, the new social media channels show more interests to this crisis, and report it through multimedia tools: Al Jazeera post an interview of WWF on Timor oil spill on Oct 24, 2009 on Youtube; guardian.co.uk hosts a online photo site monitoring the leaking. Australia Network news provides audio form of interview online. But in general, since the lacking of focus by major media community, Montara leak crisis is not listed into the public agenda. So it, to some degree, worsened the out-of-sight syndrome and makes the crisis signals more hidden until it blasts out some day.
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