PUBLIC RELATIONS

BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Introduction

On April 20, 2010, the mobile drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded about 41 miles off the coast of Louisiana when methane gas ran up the drilling column and ignited. At the time of the incident, production casing was being installed and cemented by Halliburton Energy Services (Bigg, Matthew, 2010, 11-13). The explosion killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others. Within 2 days, the rig sank, setting off an unrestricted flow of oil from the damaged wellhead 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 53,000 to 62,000 barrels of oil were released per day, covering 3,850 square miles in just over a week. After 88 days of unsuccessful attempts to stem the flowing oil, the wellhead cap was finally replaced on July 15. On September 19, nearly 5 months after the initial blowout, the federal government declared the well officially “dead.” At this point, the BP Oil Spill became, in terms of volume, the largest accidental spill in history.

In the public media, there have been multiple attributions of accountability for the disaster. The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd and leased to BP PLC, and some accuse engineers from both companies with misinterpreting the wellhead pressure test data and failing to respond to other warning signs before the explosion. Others accuse BP specifically with cutting corners on a project that was behind schedule and over budget. Still others (including BP) accuse Halliburton for a poor job of cementing and testing the wellhead and Transocean for failing to maintain the blowout preventer, suggesting it had a bad valve and weak batteries (Americas English Edition, 2010, 6-13). And still others find fault with the Minerals Management Service—the federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig was operating safely—accusing it of lax oversight and impropriety.

Discussion and Analysis

Question 1

According to the higher authorities of British Petroleum, the potential solutions to the spill are equally aligned with these views. Garret Graves, adviser on coastal issues to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, states that “I don't think there is any question that we're talking about billions of dollars in remedial action”. In contrast, other positions are built around the view that in the face of the uncertainties of the situation and type of discipline (ecology), science cannot provide clear answers; that is, “uncertainty pervades scientific predictions about future performance of global and regional regimes”. Stan Senner director of conservation science for ocean conservancy says that “the Gulf of Mexico is a different environment” than Prince William Sound. Professor Ed Overton at Louisiana State University adds that “there is some greater capacity for that environment to handle hydrocarbons”. As a result of these positions, some solutions are as extreme as that proposed by syndicated pundit Rush Limbaugh: “The Ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there (Weisman, Jonathan, Chazan, Guy, 2010, 07-13).

In contrast to logics about existential questions on issues such as the nature ...