Gentiana Spahiu
Explosion: What-s, Who-s, When-s, Where-s and Why-s…..
On April 20th of 2010, we witnessed one of the worst injustices (short/long term) done to mother nature because of –a failure of management 1
The Transocean drilling rig Digwater Horizon licensed to British Petroleum (BP) exploded in fire and triggered a massive spill which by the time
it was capped on July 15th it had released about 205.8 million gallons of oil 2 in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion took the life of 11 workers on board.3
“The Digwater rig valued more than $560 million, which was drilling 42 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, beneath 5,000 feet of water and 13,000 feet under the seabed, sank on April 22nd”. 4
Bob Graham, the co-chairman of the federal commission in investigating the BP blowout says that “Complex systems fail in complex way” and he points out a somewhat chronological list of things that went wrong. This list starts with bad cement, then bad tests to see if the cement was holding and then negligence on the part of people on board in acknowledging the signs that a blowout was building up.5
The explosion of the well was a result of a number of separate risk factors, oversights on prevention guidelines, which are in place just to avoid these events from happenings. BP, Halliburton, and Transocean are all responsible for the blowout with BP having the highest liability for the disaster.
Killing the Monster Spill…
It took about three months and 4.9 million barrels of oil for the three leaks in the oil well to be claimed officially ‘dead.’ After many failing tries, including the top kill, containment methods and other possible options, BP declared on July 15th that the leak had been stopped and in September 19 they officially claimed the well ‘effectively dead.”2 There were also 436,000 gallons of dispersant sprayed on the oil to break it up as well as 50,000 barrels of ‘heavy mud’ to stop the oil from flowing.
Aftermath on:
1- People & Business
The spill not only affected the companies involved in terms of financing and reputation; not only gave the government another wake-up call in regards of regulations and importance of finding alternative energy sources other than oil; not only took the lives of eleven people, but it has greatly affected the people and the business in the Gulf area. Fisheries and tourism are two of the main industries affected. The fishing ban at some point was placed on about one third of the Gulf. Tourism did not get affected immediately because of the numerous people who traveled to respond to the state of emergency and in the Clean Up process, but Gulf will suffer a $23 billion loss in the next three years because of the impact of the oil spill on tourism according to U.S. Travel Association. 2
Residents of the areas will most definitely be affected by the spill, not only in the employment, and the housing sector by there have been over 140 oil-exposure related cases reported by the hospitals in the area.2
2- Environment 
The oil spill has raised red flags for the ecosystem in the Gulf area. More than 6800 dead animals and birds have been collected as a result of the oil spill.
According to scientist the ecosystem requires years or even decades to recover from such event and the accurate damages are yet unknown.2 Damages to
the marine life could result even from the dispersant spray that was applied to degrade oil and prevent it from spreading. The nature is trying to rehabilitate through some bacteria found in the ocean, but evidently the self-recovery would not be sufficient. Some of the affected species are: pelicans, sea turtles, dolphins, fish, shrimps, oysters, deep sea coral, and many more. The oil-affected areas have considerably reduced oxygen which impacts the food chain of the marine life.
The cost of it all…
As of January 27th, 2011, BP has already paid over $17 billion dollars 6 and the predictions reach close to $40 billion. This is only the monetary tag to this disaster and does not portray any of the socio-political and environmental aspect of it.