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The Causes And Impacts Of British Petroleum

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On April 20, 2010, British Petroleum’s (BP) offshore drilling rig, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded and caused the largest accidental marine oil spill in history, discharging five million barrels of oil into the ocean over a period of three months. During this accident, eleven men working on the oil rig perished and seventeen others were injured severely. This crisis caused major destruction to marine wildlife caused economic harm on fishing and tourism industries and was a public relations nightmare for British Petroleum (Crandall, Parnell & Spillan, 2013). This event was horrendous; I remember the devastation that was left in the wake of this tragedy.
Beginning in the 1980’s, offshore oil production showed to be a solution for the United States’ energy issues and national security. In the beginning, the wells were in shallow water, but once these wells were dry, drilling in the deeper water began. Although there were drawbacks, such as the difficulty to drill and operate a well at such tremendous depths and because of these depths robots would have to troubleshoot maintenance problems instead of humans. Additionally, in deep waters, special drilling rigs are needed. There are two types of drilling rigs, the drillship, and the semi-submersible. The Deepwater Horizon was a semi-submersible rig that was used to excavate the well on the Macondo slope in the Gulf of Mexico. Once the excavation was done, another rig would arrive to extract the oil. Companies like British

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