Several attempts to plug the well failed. It would be 87 days before BP, which was operating the Deepwater Horizon, could bring the gusher under control. When the gas reached the rig, it triggered an explosion, killing 11 of the crew and sinking the rig. An emergency valve, called a blowout preventer, designed to cap the well in the event of such a kick, failed. While they did so, a pocket of flammable gas travelling at nearly the speed of sound shot up the drill pipe, causing it to buckle. On the morning of April 20, 2010, workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon, a BP-operated deep sea drilling rig, were sealing an exploratory oil well 1,220 meters beneath the gulf. BP may have legally paid for what its done, but morally and ethically it has not.” “Today we see a clear picture of how big oil is arrayed against the interests of everyday people. ![]() ![]() “Whenever we hear that oil spills will be less bad than we think, the Deepwater Horizon disaster shows how they can turn out,” says Bellona President Frederic Hauge, who observed the early days of the catastrophe from a helicopter over the Gulf. ![]() Ten years after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, sending some 750 million liters of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of nearly three months, it’s still difficult to say if the disaster ever had an endpoint.įrom the vantage point of New Orleans, which became ground zero for the response to the spill, there’s evidence that much of the damage from the worst oil disaster in US history lingers on. Robots attempt to repair the Macondo Well's blowout preventer during the Deepwater Horizon spill.
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