The Deepwater Oil Explosion

Due to the explosion that happened on the Deepwater Horizon Macondo oil well drilling platform and claimed the lives of 11 workers, April 20, 2010 will go down in history as a tragic day. Due to the millions of barrels of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, this catastrophe is regarded as the largest maritime oil spill in American history. A "well integrity failure" caused the disaster, according to a BP investigation dated 2010. Loss of the well fluid's regulator pressure followed it at the same time. The "blowout preventer" that was intended to activate in the case of such an incidence did not activate (Abbrian, et al. 294). Hence, hydrocarbons ended up shooting into the air in an uncontrollable way, leading to an ignition which ended up causing some series of explosions on the rig.

Underwater cameras exposed that the BP pipes were dripping oil and gas on the ocean floor to around 42 miles of the shore of Louisiana. The well was covered on July 15, 2010, 87 days after the incident happened. However, the projected 3.19 million barrels of oil had already dripped into the Gulf (Abbrian, et al. 294). Directly after the blast occurred, labourers from BP and Transocean and various government assistants took the initiative of trying to control the spread of the oil to coasts and other coastal ecologies. They used floating booms to cover superficial oil and chemical oil dispersants. Additionally, various scientists and researchers went to the Gulf area to search for figures, whereby investigators were trying to understand the spill and its effect on the environment, marine life and the Gulf shore.





The Affected Areas

BP contracted that Polaris took the initiative to assess the area that was affected, thus providing a recommendable solution for the clean-up process. The technical survey adviser Ed Owens believed that all the oil from the spill was on the surface, and only about 10% reached the shoreline. Of the surveyed area, about 200 miles was in mostly heavily oiled, while tens of miles have been moderately oiled. However, various critics believe that there were still more oil that lurks in the oceanic floors.

The Responsible Party

BP’s report seems to place Haliburton and Transocean as the primary cause. However, the findings have come under heavy criticism, indicating that BP wants to put the blame on one part, while they also had a role to play in the tragic incident. In fact, the initial well integrity let-down was due to a bad cement work by Haliburton, an oil and gas equipment company. However, the company replied to the report by BP, claiming that it had seen the omissions, but had followed the BP specifications to the latter (White et al. 20303). BP accused the rig owner, Transocean, for having failed to sustain the blowout from blowing up. The blowout preventer maintenance record was not sufficiently kept and not submitted to the maintenance department.

The records have been set straight since BP should bear the majority of the responsibility among the companies that were involved in the incident. BP received billions of dollars in penalties due to its negligence (Walker 50). BP agreed to pay the billions of dollars requested as compensation for the people and businesses affected by the disaster. According to the judge ruling, the share of the blame was the following: BP accepts 67% of the blame, Transocean Ltd 30%, and Halliburton a cement company the remaining 3%. The reasons of the fines could not be compared to the disaster that the millions of gallons caused (Walker 49). Some of the effects included wildlife deaths, stained beaches and pollution marshes. Nonetheless, the damage was done, and the respective parties had to agree to the penalties they received since they showed negligence on their part. Anadarko, the financier, was not off the hook since it had 25% shares of the Macondo Prospect. It was projected that they were also involved in paying for the caused damages.

What Could have been done to Prevent the Disaster

According to a final report by Deepwater Horizon, the accident would have been avoided if the guidelines that existed would have been followed. However, BP did not in any way poses a functional system for the existing safety culture. The entire process was a failure, and if some tactics would have been followed according to the prevention act that was in place, the disaster would not have happened. Some of the preventable situations that caused the incident were poor decision making, bad communication, failure of signal analysis and inadequate organizational-managerial process. If the mentioned factors would have been looked at seriously and the concerned staff deal with the situation as it was required, we would not be talking about the explosion (Crone, and Maya 634). BP knew that there was a faulty pipe in the blowout preventer. Nonetheless, the company opted to ignore it and did nothing to solve the situation (Crone, and Maya 634). The contingency plan that was in place had many errors and miscalculation, and if their plan was well analyzed, the problem would not exist. The three four parties that were solely responsible for the explosion did not care about the risks that they were in as they often neglected simple tasks that would have saved the lives of the people that died and the billions of dollars of the penalty that they got.

Personal Opinion

Considering the damage that occurred and the one that happened after the incident, it is quite clear that none of the parties did what was required of them. The negligence was due to BP, and the partners all pointed fingers at each other after the incident. Such character proves that they all had a part to play in the disaster. Thus, they had to be involved in claiming responsibility for the explosion. The assertion made was that if the parties had a clear mind when running the project, then simple tasks such as managerial skills would be something that would have been done appropriately. The pre-loss and post-loss was bad for business, and it has been conducted from the different studies that none of the shareholders played part in preventing the disaster. After the incident, some other negligence was observed, namely that BP was not accurately providing the data that it gathered from the field concerning the devastation that the explosion had caused. When the case is carefully analyzed, the sentencing was fair due to the losses that had occurred. For future prevention, it would be better if the government would carefully observe a project such as this one.







































Works Cited

Abbrian, R. M., et al. "Deepwater horizon oil spill." Oceanography 24.3 (2011): 294.

Crone, Timothy J., and Tolstoy, M. Magnitude of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil leak. Science 330.6004 (2010): 634-634.

Walker, B. Deepwater horizon oil spill. Journal of environmental health 73.4 (2010): 49-50.

White, Helen K., et al. Impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep-water coral community in the Gulf of Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.50 (2012): 20303-20308.