The Deepwater Horizon

This essay will discuss the long lasting effects on the economy from the explosion on the DeepWater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The events that took place on April 20, 2010 would go down in history as the worst deep sea oil spill in history. British Petroleum would suffer its greatest lost to date when one of its drilling rigs the Deepwater Horizon would blow up in the Gulf of Mexico (Crandall, Parnell & Spillan, 2014). In the days and weeks following the explosion there were signs of a problem that were overlooked after test came back inconclusive on one of the pressure systems.

All indications are that the Company’s behavior pre oil spill was irresponsible and negligent and was potentially driven primarily by a focus to provide strong returns on their investments while compromising the integrity and internal controls of the operations. Post oil spill, the Company has had to learn from the consequences of a very costly disaster in order to stay in business and thrive. The Organization appears to understand now the need for effective communication, transparency and detailed due-diligence in all their efforts.

On April 20, 2010 there was an explosion in a drilling rig that was operated and owned by Transocean. The drilling rig’s official name was “Deepwater Horizon Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit” and was in the process of drilling oil in the Macondo Propect oil field, located 40 miles off the Louisiana southeast coast. The cause was reported as a “Wellhead blowout” which cause the rig to explode, dumping more than 200 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and resulting in 11 casualties.

On April 20, 2010, the petroleum industry suffered the largest maritime disaster oil spill in its history known as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that had been working on a well for BP in the Gulf exploded and went up in flames. Subsequently, massive amounts of oil spilled out into the water, threatening the marine life and those living on the shore. The fire burned for 36 hours before the rig sank into the ocean, leaking dangerous chemicals into the water. Hydrocarbons and oil continued to leak into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days before they managed to seal the well. “The Gulf spill, which left 11 workers dead and 17 injured, is about the size of Rhode Island, running across the northern Gulf of Mexico between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Florida. It runs wide, threatening the coastlines, and deep, traveling beneath about 5,000 feet of water and 13,000 feet under the seabed,” (Emami, 2010). BP faced an angry uproar from the media, consumers, and environmentalists all over the world. The economy and the environment suffered greatly because of this incident. As investigations began, speculations quickly arose about the morals and capability of the company. The one positive image of BP had been shattered. Customers lost faith in the company and criticized the actions of its executives. Tony

In April of 2010, the Gulf of Mexico ground to a halt. An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon mobile offshore drilling unit resulted in one of the worst environmental and economic catastrophes in history. Eleven members of the crew were killed, many others sustained serious and permanent injuries. A moratorium on drilling lasted long into the following year. Massive layoffs ensued across multiple business sectors. Many commercial fishing vessels could not leave port, and those that did caught far fewer fish. Oyster beds were destroyed and miles of wetlands were marred by oil. At the time, we could only imagine how pervasive the effects would be. Shortly after the explosion, Arnold & Itkin LLP, a Houston-based litigation boutique, which represented

Since the Deepwater Horizon explosion happened nearly six years ago there have been countless reports on the explosion and scientific studies on what cause it as well as its impact. There have also been investigations into the internal workers of BP and they concerns about the rig prior to the explosion. This case brings up social, political and environmental issues to light and the approaches BP had to each of these issues.

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.

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.

When comparing to the past events, there are similarities in many cases that are evident. If BP had taken what was learned from the many accidents in the past, and applied it going forward, the Deep Horizon disaster might have been preventable. The main lesson to be learned from the Deepwater Horizon for anyone operating in the field is that safety cannot be disregarded in the quest for earnings. When the lives of your workers, and to some extent the world, are in the balance, corporations need to make use of all avenues of safety available.

In May of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon crisis occurred and began affecting our organization and a multitude of groups reliant on British Petroleum and the environment.. This oil spill continued for three months; although the remnants are still lingering today, they affected our publics as well as our company as a whole. The proactive strategies we had in place were significantly underdeveloped. As a company, we should have considered the likelihood of such a crisis, as well as better prepared for it. The reactive strategies implemented after the crisis were moderately effective; however, not sufficient enough due to the colossal scale of the spill. Therefore, we at British Petroleum have created a new set of goals and objectives, that take a

BP tends to make bets that others don’t which is most likely why the disastrous deep water horizon oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico five years ago. The fire burned for 36 hours while hydrocarbons leaked into the gulf before the well was sealed, unfortunately eleven individuals died. It has been difficult for BP to be the best company right now since this falling and they have been in reparation mode since this catastrophe. However, BP is now incorporating high safety and showed everyone that they are very reliable on the recovery of this hardship of BP trying to mix oil with water. BP came together to control the situation, cleanup, and diminish as much contamination as possible into the gulf. In addition, they are devoted long term to improve the Gulf of Mexico’s bionetwork and promise to be more careful so this will not happen again.

On April 20th, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico exploded. Nearly five million barrels were poured into the sea over three months. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig was leased by BP from TransoceaN, a swiss company. It was operated on the Macondo Well. The Macondo Well is 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon is considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the United States. There were workers that were injured during the explosion and the Marine wildlife was endangered. According to Bethel, 28 workers were injured. 11 were fatally injured and 17 workers were severely injured (Bethel University, ). The Week before the explosion, a worker bumped the control switch, causing it

Prior to this incident BP had major industrial accidents that killed employees and/or spilled oil in the environment. Reports suggesting that the top management of BP gave importance to operating cost cutting measures over safety and risk evasion. This ultimately lead to such catastrophic incident. (Bryant, M. and Hunter, T., 2010)

The disaster occurred on April 20, 2010, when the mobile drill unit, Deepwater Horizon was beginning final preparations to end drilling operations in the Macondo well. The plan was to seal the well and extract hydrocarbons at a later time and move on to a new drilling site. This, however, would not be the case as the rig experienced an explosion on board the drill. At around “10:00 p.m., the rig unexpectedly began to shake and a loud surging noise was accompanied by natural gas,

On April 20, the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico led to the largest accidental release of oil into marine waters in history. As a result, a huge loss of money and life was caused and affected serious environmental damage to wild animals and water pollution. BP was accused of their irresponsibility that it took 87 days before the well was closed and sealed. BP’s shares