DEEPWATER HORIZON Oil Spill

On April 20th, 2010, an explosion occurred on an oil rig owned by British Petroleum (BP)
and Transocean called Deepwater Horizon. A surge of natural gas blasted through a concrete
core that was recently installed, and when the natural gas reached the platform of the rigs riser,
it ignited, killing 11 people and injuring 17 others. The impact of the oil spill was more than
significant: the leak peaked at more than 60,000 gallons of oil a day, affecting both marine and
terrestrial ecosystems. Based on the type of damage it caused, this hazard can be classified as
both bio and environmental. Discussing more specifically on the oil spill, the focus will be on the
hazard itself, the cleanup, and how it could have been prevented.
To better understand the severity of the incident requires a more detailed description of
the area affected. The oil well from which Deepwater Horizon was drawing from was the
Macondo wellhead, located over 5,000 feet beneath the waters surface in the deep sea. At this
depth, light does not penetrate, creating a permanently dark environment with extremely high
pressure. This made the well extremely hard to cap. By the time the well was capped on July 15,
2010, an estimated 200 million gallons of crude oil had already leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.
The leaked oil spread throughout the water column; some floated to the oceans surface, pushed
around by winds and spreading extremely quickly; some hovered in midwater, mixing with the
seawater and forming several layers of oil; some oil sunk to the surface of the seafloor,
destroying deep sea corals and potentially other ecosystems that are not easily located. The
cleanup was not easy either, due to many environmental factors such as currents, tides, weather,
wind, and temperature that created different scenarios for the oil to spread. However, it had to be
done.

The first type of cleanup approach is to control the spread of the oil using actual barriers,
blocking the oil that float to the surface so that it does not flow into harbors, beaches, or
biologically important areas. They then use different tools to remove the collected oil, such as
skimmers and sorbents to rid the water of most of the oil. Chemical dispersants are also utilized
in order to speed up the oils natural biodegradation process. In this specific case oil spill, over
1.4 million gallons of various chemical dispersants were used to treat the oil. Scientists are still
researching today to try and fully understand the long-term effects of dispersants on the
environment and its inhabitants, especially how they move through the food chain to impact
humans.
While the long term effects can potentially show up in the near future, the immediate
impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were more than horrendous. Pictures of pelicans
covered in oil, belly-up fish in brown sludge, and smothered turtles washed ashore were taken
right after the incident. There was a great increase in strandings of dolphins and sea turtles in the
years after the spill. Marine birds were initially harmed by surface oil, since the oil on their
feathers affect their ability to fly and dive. Researchers know for certain that coral populations
showed signs of tissue damage and were covered by oil, lowering their survival rates and ability
to settle and grow. One of the scariest impacts is that the oil may have wiped out populations of
plankton and microbes, which includes the larvae of fish and other animals that people eat,
meaning that it would have created gaps in species populations that may lead to ripple effect on
the entire food web.
As the largest accidental ocean spill in history, the Deepwater Horizon incident led to
significant negative impact on the environment and ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico. One thing
that can be taken away from the disaster of Deepwater Horizon and the death of 11 people is that

following protocols can prevent hazards from turning into disasters. Investigations show that
signs of hazard were present, but ignored by the companies, causing emergency procedures
during the explosion to fail, leading to the complete destruction of the rig, and thus the almost
out of control oil spill. The cause of the explosion is then most likely due to the deviation from
standards of well control engineering.

Questions:
1. What type of hazard was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?
2. What were some of the more severe impacts of the spill?
3. What were the basic cleanup methods in the event of an oil spill?
4. What was likely the cause of the explosion, and how could it have been prevented?
For myself while writing this paper:
5. How can one observe the impacts of a disaster and learn from such an event?

References

"40,000-Pound Tar Mat Reminds Us the Oil Spill Is Not Over." Wildlife Promise 40000Pound
Tar Mat Reminds Us the Oil Spill Is Not Over Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://blog.nwf.org/2013/06/40000-pound-tar-mat-reminds-us-the-oil-spill-is-not-over/>.

"Cleanup Efforts." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 13 Nov.
2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1698988/Deepwater-Horizon-oilspill-of-2010/296705/Cleanup-efforts>.

"Oil May Be Seeping from Deepwater Horizon Site." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 13
Nov. 2014. <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/oil-may-be-seeping-from-deepwaterhorizon-site/>.

Robertson, Campbell, and Clifford Krauss. "Gulf Spill Is the Largest of Its Kind, Scientists Say."
The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Aug. 2010. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03spill.html?_r=2&fta=y&>.

"THE USE OF SURFACE AND SUBSEA DISPERSANTS DURING THE BP DEEPWATER