Bp Oil Spill Case Study

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred because “oil from the well shot up and out of the drill column under high pressure, extended on the drilling rig and exploded (wikipedia)”. The rig set on fire and later sank. BP, Transocean, along with government agency employer, all worked hard to avoid further spread of the oil.

After a long debate with the mangers of the rig, it was determined that the rig had a malfunction and overdue for a lot of updates and maintenance, but BP representatives did not believe it, and pushed the rig to its limits. The rig operated normally for some time, at least that’s what the BP representative were thinking, but they were wrong. The rig could not handle the pressure and it busted. Due to the negligence the rig eventually blew up, spilling a lot of oil. “The oil spill, the worst in maritime history, dumped 4.2 million barrels of oil, and officials released 1.8 million gallons of Corexit, a chemical depressant used to break up the oil, into the Gulf before the well was sealed.”(Marsa, 2016, para.

Just after midnight on May 4, 2009, flammable vapor from the process leaked and ignited causing an explosion that severely injured two employees. Subsequent explosions damaged the site and nearby residences and businesses. It took over ten hours to subdue the flames.

Eleven people died and seventeen were injured (Friedman 13). The people died and got hurt when it exploded (Friedman 13). An examination of primary and secondary sources will reveal the historical significance of this event.

The rig was built by South Korean company Hyundai Heavy Industries. The rig was drilling a 35,050 feet (10,680 m) deep exploratory well in approximately 5,100 feet (1,600 m) of water. The well is situated in the Macondo Prospect in Mississippi Canyon Block 252 (MC252) of the Gulf of Mexico, whilst also maintained by Halliburton, and Transocean the rig was majority owned and operated by the British Petroleum. On April 20, 2010, high-pressure methane gas from the well expanded into the drilling riser and rose into the drilling rig, where it ignited and exploded, engulfing the platform. At the time, 126 crew members were on board: seven BP employees, 79 of Transocean and employees of various other companies. Eleven workers were presumed dead, never being found. The Deepwater Horizon sank on the morning of 22 April 2010. The efforts to contain the leak at first were unsuccessful due to miscalculations and misinterpretations of what was required. However, on September 19, 2010 the well was permanently sealed when a relief well was dug into the oil deposit and cement was poured into the oil well. The environmental impact, health consequences, economy and ultimately the death of the 11 workers were the consequent issues that arose with the tremendous release of oil into the ocean. These consequent problems were in part due to negligence as well as BP’s failure to fulfill their corporate ethical duties.

The BP oil spill was one of the worst oil spills to ever happen in the US. There are many factors that caused this horrible spill to happen; to be exact there were eight failures of the oilrig that caused this disaster. The first failure was the cement at the bottom of the borehole was not sealed properly. This caused the oil and gas to start leaking into the pipe leading to the surface of the rig. The second failure was that the valve leading to the surface was sealed improperly with cement. In addition, there were two mechanical valves, which failed to stop the leak of gas and oil. The crew was also to blame because they did pressure tests, which they did not read properly. This made the crew believe the oil well was under control when it was not. The crew also did not spot the leak before the explosion; there was an increase in pressure inside the well fifty minutes before the explosion but the crew did not interpret it as a leak. Next, about eight minutes before the rig exploded, mud and gas began to come out onto the floor of the rig. The crew tried to stop this by activating the blowout preventer, which is at the top of the well, however this caused the blowout preventer to malfunction. The rig had side vents that were suppose to release this mud and gas, but instead it was diverted to a device that separates only small amounts of mud and gas. This device quickly became overwhelmed and flammable gas was sent all over the rig. The alarm on the rig should have sounded

Four weeks before the explosion, there was a discovery that a worker had bumped the control switch where it had moved a portion of the pipe through the BOP, that caused chunks of rubber that were found in the drilling fluid. No action was taken to fix the problem (Cook,2010).

The biggest oil spill in history started on April 20th, 2010 by an oil ring called the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil ring was owned by an offshore oil drilling company called Transocean and they were leasing the oil ring to British Petroleum. The oil well was located on a seabed 4,993 feet below the surface of the ocean. On April 20th, a surge of natural gas penetrated through the concrete core and went up the Deepwater rig’s riser which led to the drilling platform catching fire, and exploding. This caused eleven people to die and injured another seventeen people. During this oil spill more than 200 million gallons of oil was pumped over a period of 87 days into the Gulf of Mexico until the well was capped in July, 2010. A study in the blowout preventer showed that huge blades known as blind shear rams

First, in 2010, Transocean created an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana. 7 productive years later, the rig exploded, almost in sync with the B.P team getting an award for no explosions in 7 years. The team also skipped the pressure test, which was supposed to be the week before the explosion, on April 13. Many scientists believe they skipped it because it was estimated 9-12 hours, with a very expensive cost. As a result of these other projects, the employees were focusing less on the rig, which soon exploded at 9:56 pm, April 20.

It was drilling the deepest oil well in history with a vertical depth of 35,050 ft. (Blanchfield 11). It unexpectedly exploded on April 20th, 2010 and killed 11 crewmen. Somehow, a highly flammable gas made it up the drilling pipes of the rig and caused a fire. 2 days later, the rig sank into the ocean, spilling thousands of gallons of Macondo oil each day just 52 miles off of the coast of Louisiana (Blanchfield 2). Over the course of 87 days, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leaked an estimated 3.19 million barrels of Macondo oil into the Gulf of Mexico, which became the worst marine oil spill in U.S. history and affected the area’s environment, economy, and

On April 20, 2010, the British Petroleum (BP) leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig took an unexpected kick of gas pressure from an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The release ignited, and through the failure of the blowout preventers progressed into a firestorm. The fire consumed the drilling rig platform, sinking it, causing 11 casualties, and the subsequent release of 4.9 million barrels of oil into in the gulf before the release contained (British Petroleum). The incident is

The BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill was one of the worst spills occurred in the history of the oil industry because the way it was carried out and the way it occurred. The had affected the people worldwide it’s didn’t just affect the people who were onboard or the company because had effects on the environment, share prices were dropping, the company had to pay huge amount into the fines to the governments and also, they had to pay huge amount to clean the gulf water and the affected shore area. The total amount BP spend in fines was about the $56.4 billion. This spill was worse than the spill occurred in Exxon Valdez because it damaged the shoreline of four states threatening more than 65000 acres of land to be damaged. Over 8000 animals

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. It was positioned over the Macondo oil well when a burst of natural gas broke through the concrete core that had been used to seal off the oil well for later use. Once released by the fractured core the gas made its way up the riser and onto the platform, where it ignited killing eleven workers and injuring seventeen others. The highest-ranking BP supervisors on board the oil rig known as “Well site leaders” observed indications that the well was not secure, but did not take appropriate actions in order to remedy the problem. If the supervisors had done something, they may have been able to save the eleven lives lost that day. A similar accident happened to the Caspian Sea at another BP oil well in September 2008. Both cores were too weak to withstand the pressure because the concrete mixture contained Nitrogen gas used to accelerate the curing process (Brennan, 2013). Two days later the rig capsized and in the process knocked over the riser they had filled with drilling mud in order to stop the flow of gas and oil. Now with nothing holding it back the oil, it began pouring out of the hole. The oil that was being released everyday peaked at around 60,000 barrels of oil in one day. The well discharged oil for eighty-seven days before their attempts to repair the hole were successful. In the end, nearly five million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill happened on August 10, 2010. Today,this is known as the biggest oil spill of all time and has affected thousands due to unreasonable mistakes made by British Petroleum rig workers. The Deepwater Horizon rig, owned and operated by offshore-oil-drilling company, Transocean, and leased by oil company British Petroleum, was situated in the Macondo oil prospect in the Mississippi Canyon, a valley in the continental shelf. On this day, a surge of natural gas blasted through a concrete core, recently installed by a contractor, Halliburton. The core of the rig was too weak to withstand the pressure because they were composed of a concrete mixture that used nitrogen

The Deepwater Horizon was one of the largest offshore oil-drilling rigs in the world. During its more than nine years of service, all of which were under lease to the British Petroleum Company, numerous inspections were conducted by the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS). The exact number of inspection cannot be verified due to lack of proper recordkeeping and supporting documentation. The number of inspections has varied between eighty-three and eighty-eight, with as many as forty-eight being conducted since January, 2005. (Kunzelman & Burke, 2010). One of the safety violations documented during an inspection was on the blowout valve that failed causing the fireball that ignited the drilling platform. The question arises as to