ABSTRACT
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which began on April 20, 2010, with an explosion on the drilling rig that killed 11 workers, was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. No single individual was responsible for the spill. Hence, there is a case in which a judgement about collective responsibility was called for, a case where the locus of responsibility was not a particular individual but a group or groups, or individuals as members of one or another group. When the question of moral responsibility was turned, there were three sorts of answers in the cases of collective responsibility. Firstly, individuals who played one or another sort of role in the various companies involved bear moral responsibility for what happened. Secondly, only the companies themselves bear moral responsibility, in which case the companies as liable per se and hence as moral agents and thirdly both individuals and the companies involved bear moral responsibility.
