Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The Deepwater Horizon was an oil rig owned by the Transocean oil-drilling company and leased by the company British Petroleum Corporation. It was positioned over a seabed 4,993 feet below the surface and located approximately 41 miles away from the Louisiana coast. On April 20, 2010, the oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and its well released almost 5 million barrels containing oil into the ocean. The explosion was caused by natural gasses that broke through the rig’s concrete core which travelled up to the platform and caught fire. 11 workers were killed and 17 were injured in the incident. The oil rig sank two days after on April 22, 2010. Without anything to oppose its upward pressure, the well continued to discharge oil. According …show more content…
The spill affected more than 1,000 square miles of seafloor, contaminating its water. It had not only polluted the water, but it harmed the organisms that lived in it as well. The oil covered numerous birds, mammals, and sea turtles, which severely affected them, birds especially. Around 12% of brown pelicans and 30% of laughing gulls died because of it. The oil spill could have also been a possibility for the occurrence of Brucellosis in stranded dolphins due to the toxins it contained. Researchers suspect that these animals could have been more susceptible to other “environmental dangers”, says Pallady (2016). Three years later in 2013, it was observed that sickness and lung and adrenal disorders were found in dolphins residing in Barataria Bay, Louisiana. Their illnesses were linked to oil exposure. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was one of the biggest oil spills recorded in history, affecting 28 people, a large area of seabed and the many organisms living in …show more content…
The disaster stemmed from a number of causes such as faulty engineering, failure to follow proper safety precautions, and negligence. Problems had started to rise even weeks prior to the explosion of the oil rig. The material used for cementing and mudding the oil well contained chemicals that released heat which caused the gas to rise up to the rig (Eley, 2010). The platform was vulnerable to the highly flammable gas travelling up through its pipes. According to Tom Eley (2010), the gas was only seen as a minor concern by the British Petroleum Corporation despite having been forewarned by the government that it was indeed a serious issue. These factors caused the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to explode which resulted in devastating longterm effects on the environment and the organisms in it. The several millions of barrels deployed into the Gulf of Mexico may have possibly caused damage that cannot be undone, research says. The Gulf States had an abundance of saltwater marshes that were important for carbon absorption and filtration for polluted waters. Grass roots in the marsh could not grip the soil anymore thus causing erosion (Silliman, 2016). Typically, oil spills have a great negative impact on seabirds especially, resulting in long-term effects such as rapid decrease in

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