Twelve years since the commencement of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster

It has been twelve years since – due to some reckless, schedule-driven decisions, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon disaster began.

Drilling a 5,600m (18,000’) exploratory well in 1,600m (5,100’) of water, the drill-pipe suffered a “kick” – an extreme, and rapid pressure shift within the bore that caused, in this case, a severe blowout.

Under thousands of pounds of pressure, once out of control, a blowout remains that way until extreme measures are taken to bring it back into control. It took five months to shut the major oil flow down (although two years later the well was still leaking).

Initially BP played it down – claiming that ‘only’ 1000 barrels (42,000 gallons) per day were being blown into the environment. This was until folks not working for BP/Exxon/Haliburton “did the math” and found that the flow rate was more like 62,000 barrels (2.6 million gallons) per day.

Fearing bad PR from a highly photogenic disaster, one of BPs antics was to apply dispersants at the wellhead – keeping at least some of this mess from floating to the surface. This prompted Senator (then Representative) Ed Markey (D-MA) to require BP to provide a live feed of the blowing wellhead to the public.

But the conditions at the water surface didn’t just fade into the background of the daily news; animal rescue crews along hundreds of miles of wetlands, marshes, and beaches kept the disaster “above the fold” for quite some time. An 180,000m² (70.000mi²) oil slick the size of Oklahoma was monitored by NASA as it perilously moved around the Gulf.

What was not seen – and the extent of its spread remains the oil/dispersant cocktail that the wellhead dispersant maneuver created. A WHOI study indicated that the dispersants had a positive affect on the air quality above the waterline, and thus improving the working environment for the situation responders. But the study did not speculate much about the impacts that two hundred million gallons of dispersant-infused hydrocarbon fluids might be having on the benthic and pelagic habitats.

Given that there is a correlation between wind currents and ocean currents, that a similar area the size of Oklahoma may also be impacted below the waves. And to be clear; this disaster began twelve years ago. It is still happening.

We need to remember this in the discussions about continuing with offshore oil leases. We enjoy a really high quality of life onshore – driven in part by the damage we incur offshore. It needn’t be this way; I am sure that if we take fossil fuel out of the equation, we might enjoy an even higher quality of life.