Deepwater Horizon oil spill

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Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The oil slick as seen from space by NASA's Terra satellite on May 1, 2010.

Location	Gulf of Mexico near Mississippi River Delta
Date	April 20, 2010 to ongoing
Cause
Cause	Blowout
Casualties	11 missing, presumed dead 17 injured
Operator	Transocean under lease for BP
Spill characteristics
Volume	from 5,000 up to 25,000 barrels per day
Area	2,500 to 9,100 square miles (6,500 to 23,600 km)

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also known as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill) is a massive ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that started on April 20, 2010. The spill followed a blowout that caused an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, which then sank off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven rig workers are missing and presumed dead; the explosion also injured 17 others. The oil spill covers a surface area of at least 2,500 square miles (6,500 km) according to estimates reported on May 3, 2010 by CNBC. The oil spill, originating from a deepwater oil well 5,000 feet (1,500 m) below sea level, is discharging an estimated 5–25 thousand barrels (210,000–1,050,000 US gallons; 790,000–3,970,000 litres) of crude oil daily. The spill is expected to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as the worst US oil disaster in history. Experts fear that it will result in an environmental disaster as the oil from the well site reaches the Gulf coast, damaging the Gulf of Mexico fishing industry, tourism industry, and habitat of hundreds of bird species.

BP was principal developer of the "Macondo Prospect" oil field and leased the drilling rig from Transocean Ltd. The U.S. Government has named BP as the responsible party in the incident and will hold the company accountable for all cleanup costs resulting from the oil spill. BP has accepted responsibility for the oil spill and the cleanup costs but indicated that the accident was not their fault as the rig was run by Transocean personnel. One of the plans, in progress, is the lowering of a containment dome to funnel the leaking oil, through a pipe system, up to a ship on the surface (see diagram at right ).

Background

Deepwater Horizon

Main article: Deepwater Horizon

The Deepwater Horizon was a fifth generation, ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, column-stabilized, semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU), a floating drilling rig bearing the Marshall Islands flag. The rig was 396 feet (121 m) long and 256 feet (78 m) wide and could operate in waters up to 8,000 feet (2,400 m) deep, to a maximum drill depth of 30,000 feet (9,100 m). Built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea and completed in 2001, the rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased to BP until September 2013. At the time of the explosion, the rig was on BP's Mississippi Canyon Block 252, referred to as the Macondo Prospect, in the United States sector of the Gulf of Mexico, about 41 miles (66 km) off the Louisiana coast.

Explosion and fire

The fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon reportedly started at 9:45 p.m. CST on April 20, 2010. Survivors described the incident as a sudden explosion which gave them less than five minutes to escape as the alarm went off. Video of the fire shows billowing flames, taller than a multistory building, and a captain of a rescue boat described the heat as so intense that it was melting the paint off the boats. After burning for more than a day, Deepwater Horizon sank on April 22, 2010. The Coast Guard stated to CNN on April 22 that they received word of the sinking at approximately 10:21 AM. At an April 30 press conference, BP said that it did not know the cause of the explosion.

Adrian Rose, a vice president of Transocean, Ltd., said workers had been performing their standard routines with "no indication of any problems" just prior to the explosion. According to a Transocean spokesperson, at the time of the explosion the rig was drilling but was not in production. Production casing was being run and cemented at the time of the accident. Once the cementing was complete, it was due to be tested for integrity and a cement plug set to temporarily abandon the well for later completion as a subsea producer. Halliburton has confirmed that it cemented the Macondo well but never set a cement plug to cap the bore as "operations had not reached a stage where a final plug was needed". Halliburton said that it had finished cementing 20 hours before the fire. According to Transocean executive Adrian Rose, "undoubtedly abnormal pressure" had accumulated inside the marine riser and as it came up it "expanded rapidly and ignited", an event known as a blowout.

As reported by the Associated Press, the blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP's internal investigation. Seven BP executives were on board the rig celebrating the project's safety record when the blowout occurred; they were injured but survived.

Casualties and rescue efforts

Supply boats continued to battle the fire, viewed from a Coast Guard helicopter

Nine rig crew on the rig floor and two engineers died during the explosion. According to officials, 126 individuals were on board, of whom 79 were Transocean employees, six were from BP, and 41 were contracted; of these, 115 individuals \were evacuated. Most of the workers evacuated the rig and took diesel-powered fiberglass lifeboats to the M/V Damon B Bankston, a workboat that BP had hired to service the rig; 17 were then evacuated from the workboat by helicopter. Most survivors were brought to Port Fourchon for a medical check-up and to meet their families. Although 94 workers were taken to shore with no major injuries, four were transported to another vessel, and 17 were sent to trauma centers in Mobile, Alabama and Marrero, Louisiana. Most were soon released.

Initial reports indicated between 12 to 15 workers were missing. The United States Coast Guard launched a massive rescue operation. Four helicopters, four coast guard ships and one plane were used for rescue operations. Two Coast Guard cutters continued searching overnight. By the morning of April 22 the Coast Guard had surveyed nearly 1,940 miles (3,120 km) in 17 separate air and sea search missions. On April 23, the Coast Guard called off the search for the 11 missing persons, concluding that the "reasonable expectations of survival" had passed. Officials concluded that the missing workers may have been near the blast and not been able to escape the sudden explosion.

Investigation

On April 22, 2010 the United States Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service launched an investigation on possible causes of the explosion. The United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee has asked Halliburton for a briefing on 5 May and by 7 May to provide any documents it might have related to its work on the Macondo well.

The Minerals Management Service officials said there have been 39 fires or explosions offshore in the Gulf of Mexico in the first five months of 2009, the last period with statistics available. There had been numerous previous spills and fires on the Deepwater Horizon, which had been issued citations for "acknowledged pollution source" by the Coast Guard 18 times between 2000 and 2010. The previous fires were not considered unusual for a Gulf rig and have not been connected to the April, 2010 explosion and spill. The Deepwater Horizon did, however, have other serious incidents including a 2008 incident where 77 persons were evacuated from the rig after it listed over and began to sink after a section of pipe was accidentally removed from the rig's ballast system.

Oil spill

Pre-spill precautions

In February 2009, BP filed a 52-page exploration and environmental impact plan with the federal Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well. The plan stated that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities", and that "due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected".

Although the BP wellhead had a blowout preventer (BOP) installed, it was not fitted with additional remote-control or acoustically-activated triggers for use in case of an emergency requiring a rig to be evacuated: it did have a "deadman" switch designed to automatically cut the pipe and seal the well if communication from the rig is lost, but this switch did not activate. Both Norway and Brazil require the device on all offshore rigs, but when the Minerals Management Service considered requiring the remote device, a report commissioned by the agency, as well as drilling companies, questioned its cost (approximately $500,000) and effectiveness. In 2003 the agency ultimately determined that the device would not be required because rigs had other back-up systems to cut off a well.

Discovery of oil spill

On the morning of April 22, 2010, CNN quoted Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler as saying that "oil was leaking from the rig at the rate of about 8,000 barrels (340,000 US gal) of crude per day." That afternoon, as a large oil slick spread, Senior Chief Petty Officer Michael O'Berry used the same figure. Asked by CNN if the oil that had been fueling the fire would be escaping into the sea, O'Berry said, "That is correct. . . . The potential, right now, is you've got almost 336,000 US gallons (8,000 bbl) of sweet, light crude oil per day that was coming out of that well, so that oil will be, you know, released into the water now." O'Berry stated that two Remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) had been sent down both that day and the day before to attempt to cap the well, but had been unsuccessful. Butler warned of a leak of up to 700,000 US gallons (17,000 bbl) of diesel fuel, and BP Vice President David Rainey termed the incident as being a potential "major spill."

BP on April 22 announced that it was deploying an ROV to the site to assess whether oil was flowing from the well. Other reports indicated that BP was using more than one ROV and that the purpose was to attempt to plug the well pipe. The next day, April 23, a Reuters article titled "Oil spill not growing" referred to an unnamed "spokeswoman" and an ROV that "found no oil leaking from the sunken ... rig and no oil flowing from the well." Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry, interviewed by CBS, when specifically asked how much oil was emanating from the ocean floor wellhead or the broken pipes or risers, stated that no oil was emanating from either. On another TV interview the same day, Landry stated, "The fact that there is no oil spilled other than that small amount we were able to work with, that's a good thing," and expressed "cautious optimism" of zero environmental impact. Subsequently, news stories of April 23 quoted Admiral Landry as saying that no oil appeared to be leaking from either the undersea wellhead or at the water's surface, and that oil spilled from the explosion and sinking was being contained. The following day, April 24, Landry announced that a damaged wellhead was indeed leaking oil into the Gulf. Landry described it as "a very serious spill, absolutely."

Volume and extent of oil spill

BP originally estimated up to 1,000 barrels (42,000 US gal) a day was leaking from the wellhead. On April 28, NOAA said that the rate was probably five times that initially estimated by BP, i.e. 5,000 barrels (210,000 US gal). Other sources using satellite imagery have put that number as high as 5,000 to 10,000 barrels (210,000 to 420,000 US gal) a day. According to BP, estimating the flow is very difficult, as there is no metering of the flow underwater. In their permit filed with the MMS, BP quotes a worst case daily discharge of 163,000 barrels (6,800,000 US gal).

The spread of the oil was increased by strong southernly winds caused by an impending cold front. By April 25, the oil spill covered 1,500 square kilometres (580 sq mi) and was only 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the Chandeleur Islands, ecologically sensitive barrier islands, damaged in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. An April 30 estimate placed the total spread of the oil at 3,850 square miles (10,000 km). The spill quickly approached the Delta National Wildlife Refuge and Breton National Wildlife Refuge, where dead animals, including a sea turtle, were found.

Mike Miller of Safety Boss, a fire-fighting company that specializes in oil wells, suggested that the oil spill may become the biggest in history. The oil slick may eventually exceed the volume of oil in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, one of the largest ever spills in US waters. At the rate of 5,000 barrels (210,000 US gal), it will take less than two months for the current spill to surpass the 270 thousand barrels (11,000,000 US gal) spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

Ian MacDonald, an oceanography specialist at Florida State University, estimated that oil might be leaking at a rate of 25,000 barrels (1,000,000 US gal) a day and that the oil slick as of May 2, 2010, might already contain more than 9,000,000 US gallons (210,000 bbl). He later estimated the spill to be about 12,000,000 US gallons (290,000 bbl). The Wall Street Journal suggests that the oil may be leaking at 1,000,000 US gallons (24,000 bbl) per day, reaching nearly 100,000,000 US gallons (2,400,000 bbl) in 90 days, when the spill is expected to be capped. In comparison, the Exxon Valdez disaster spilled close to 10,800,000 US gallons (260,000 bbl) of oil, and the Deepwater Horizon spill may surpass that in only a few days.

Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety, has said, "There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too," and that the oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track." Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, expressed concern about a total collapse of the pipe inserted into the well. If that happens, the resulting flow could be even more devastating because regulating the flow would then be impossible. BP has not said how much oil is beneath the Gulf seabed Deepwater Horizon was tapping, but a company official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels. On May 3 President Barack Obama toured the staging area for response efforts and afterwards said, "We're dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster."

Scientists predict that the Gulf Stream could pick up the oil and carry it around Florida to the East Coast, but on May 5, Robert Weisberg of The University of South Florida said winds would take the oil away from the Loop Current, which becomes the Gulf Stream. Ruoying He of North Carolina State University, and head of the Ocean Observing and Monitoring Group, said if the oil reached the Gulf Stream, then south Florida, including the Keys, would likely be affected. Whether it comes ashore farther north depends on local winds, but the Gulf Stream moves away from the coast southeast of Charleston, South Carolina at a formation called the Charleston Bump. Susan Lozier of Duke University said in late spring off the Carolinas, the winds would blow away from the shore. Rich Luettich, director of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, said the oil could remain a problem for as much as a year, or even longer. He did say in the unlikely event the oil reached North Carolina's coast, the Outer Banks would provide significant protection.

Activities to stop the oil leak

The rig's blowout preventer (BOP), a fail-safe device fitted at source of the well, did not automatically cut-off the oil flow as intended when the explosion occurred. BP attempted to use ROVs to close the blowout preventer valves on the well head 5,000 feet (1,500 m) below sea level, a valve closing procedure taking 24–36 hours. As of May 2, 2010, BP had sent six ROVs to close the blowout preventer valves, but all attempts were ultimately unsuccessful.

BP engineers are developing two possible options to control or stop the oil spill. The first and fastest is to place a subsea oil recovery system over the well head. This involves placing a 125-tonne (276,000 lb) dome over the largest of the well leaks and piping it to a storage vessel on the surface. This option could collect as much as 85% of the leaking oil but is entirely untested at such depths. BP hopes to deploy the system between May 9-11. BP is also preparing to drill a relief well into the original well to relieve it. Transocean's Development Driller III has arrived on site and is preparing to drill and is scheduled to start a relief well by May 1, 2010. Transocean's Discoverer Enterprise is also underway, should a second relief well be necessary. This operation will take two to three months to stop the flow of oil and will cost about US$100 million. Re-drilling the well straight down was done in Australia after the 2009 Montara oil spill. In this case, once the second drilling operation reached the original borehole the operators pumped drilling mud into the well to stop the flow of oil.

Containment and cleanup

BP, which was leading the cleanup, initially employed ROVs, 700 workers, four airplanes and 32 vessels to contain the oil. After the discovery that the undersea wellhead was leaking, the oil cleanup was hampered by high waves on April 24 and 25. According to BP Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, BP will compensate all those affected by the oil spill saying that "We are taking full responsibility for the spill and we will clean it up and where people can present legitimate claims for damages we will honor them. We are going to be very, very aggressive in all of that."

On April 28, the US military announced it was joining the cleanup operation. Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP, welcomed the assistance of the US military. The same day, the US Coast Guard also announced it would commence burning of the oil and initiated a controlled burn later that day 30 miles (48 km) east from the Mississippi River Delta, in an effort to protect environmentally sensitive wetlands. On 30 April, President Barack Obama announced that he had dispatched "the Secretaries of Interior and Homeland Security, as well as the Administrator of the EPA, my Assistant for Energy and Climate Change Policy, and the NOAA Administrator to the Gulf Coast" to assess the disaster and that the U.S. Federal Government was using "every single resource at our disposal" to control the slick.

By April 29, 69 vessels including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels were active in cleanup activities. In an attempt to minimize impact to sensitive areas in the Mississippi River Delta area, over 100,000 feet (19 mi) of containment booms were deployed along the coast. By the next day, this nearly doubled to 180,000 feet (34 mi) of deployed booms, with an additional 300,000 feet (57 mi) staged or being deployed. On May 2, high winds and rough waves rendered oil-catching booms largely ineffective.

On April 30, approximately 2,000 people and 79 vessels were involved in the response. BP claims that more than 853,000 US gallons (3,230,000 litres) of oil-water mix have been recovered. On May 4, the U.S Coast Guard estimated that 170 vessels, and nearly 7,500 personnel were involved in the cleanup efforts, with an additional 2,000 volunteers assisting. Two United States Department of Defence C-130 Hercules aircraft are being employed to spray oil dispersant.

The type of oil involved is also a major problem. While most of the oil drilled off Louisiana is a lighter crude, because the leak is deep under the ocean surface the leaking oil is a heavier blend which contains asphalt-like substances, and, according to Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, this type of oil emulsifies well, making a "major sticky mess". Once it becomes that kind of mix, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, doesn't rinse off as easily, can't be eaten by microbes as easily, and doesn't burn as well. "That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons", Overton and others said.

It was announced May 5, that the smallest of three known leaks had been capped which would not reduce the oil flow out of the well but would limit further containment efforts needed to the two other leak locations.

Consequences

Threat to Gulf Coast

On April 29, Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency in the state after weather forecasts predicted the slick would reach the Louisiana coast by April 30. More than 400 species, including whales and dolphins, face a dire threat from the spill, along with Louisiana's barrier islands and marshlands. In the national refuges most at risk, about 34,000 birds have been counted, including gulls, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, egrets, shore birds, terns, and blue herons. By April 30, the Coast Guard received reports that oil had begun washing up to wildlife refuges and seafood grounds on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. It is possible the Gulf Stream sea currents can spread the oil into the Atlantic Ocean.

Financial impact

Initial cost estimates to the fishing industry were $2.5 billion, while the impact on tourism along Florida's Paradise coast could be $3 billion. Because of the risk that the oil spill can affect the shrimping industry, an emergency shrimping season was opened on April 29, 2010 so that a catch could be brought in before the oil advanced too far. On May 2, the NOAA closed commercial and recreational fishing in affected federal waters between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Pensacola Bay, increasing the closed area by approximately 50% on May 7.

An April 30 Merrill Lynch report found that five companies connected to the disaster, BP, Transocean, Anadarko Petroleum, Halliburton and Cameron International, had lost a total of $21 billion in market capitalization since the explosion. It noted that Halliburton, which had lost $1.5 billion, "generally does not take environmental risk" and includes a limited liability clause in its contracts, and that Cameron's loss of $1.8 billion in market value was out of proportion to its involvement as manufacturer of the blowout preventer, as "most manufacturers are not responsible for consequential damages." Currently, United States federal law limits BP's liability for non cleanup costs to $75 million.

Litigation

On April 22, the families of two missing workers filed lawsuits in federal and state court in Louisiana against BP and Transocean, alleging negligence and failure to meet federal regulations. As of April 30, at least four lawsuits had been filed and insurers were bracing for years of claims. One report put the number of lawsuits at "more than two dozen." Another article counted three dozen, including 31 attempts to file class action lawsuits. The Oil Pollution Act will likely play a key role in determining responsibility according to an attorney in New Orleans not involved in the litigation. The cases are likely to be combined into one court for evidence-gathering and pretrial decisions, according to Michael G. Stag, a lawyer for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, which sued on April 30. BP Plc, Transocean Ltd., Cameron International Corp., and Halliburton Energy Services Inc. have all been named in one or more of the lawsuits.

U.S. and Canadian offshore drilling policy

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar stated that the disaster "has huge ramifications about what happens to energy development in the ocean all around the world." Salazar ordered immediate inspections of all deep-water operations in the Gulf of Mexico. An Outer Continental Shelf safety review board within the Department of the Interior will provide recommendations for conducting drilling activities in the Gulf. According to President Obama, no new offshore drilling leases will be issued until a thorough review determines whether more safety systems are needed.

On May 3, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, reacting to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, withdrew his support for a proposed plan to allow offshore drilling in California to be expanded to include the area of the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, stating, "I see on TV the birds drenched in oil, the fishermen out of work, the massive oil spill and oil slick destroying our precious ecosystem."

On April 28, the National Energy Board of Canada issued a letter to oil companies saying it "intends to ask questions about this incident" during upcoming talks on offshore drilling, and asking them to explain their argument against safety rules which require same-season relief wells. Five days later the Canadian Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, said the talks should not proceed as the government would not approve a decision to relax safety or environment regulations for large energy projects.

Atlantis Oil Field safety practices

The Deepwater Horizon disaster has given new impetus to an effort by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and 18 fellow Democrats to pressure the Minerals Management Service to investigate safety practices on the BP offshore platform in the Atlantis Oil Field. According to Common Dreams NewsCenter, a whistleblower report to MMS in March 2009 that was confirmed by an independent expert, said that "a BP database showed that over 85 percent of the Atlantis Project's Piping and Instrument drawings lacked final engineer-approval, and that the project should be immediately shut down until those documents could be accounted for and are independently verified." According to Grijalva, "MMS and congressional staff have suggested that while the company by law must maintain 'as-built' documents, there is no requirement that such documents be complete or accurate." BP and other oil industry groups wrote letters objecting to a proposed MMS rule last year that would have required stricter safety measures. The MMS changed rules in April 2008 to exempt certain projects in the central Gulf region, allowing BP to operate in the Macondo Prospect without filing a "blowout" plan.

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