According to the New York Times, an explosion happened in
April 20, 2010. The Deep-water Horizon, connected to a well owned by BP, the
oiling company, and caused the biggest oil spill in history. During these last
two years, the results of the damage have constantly been modified. People and
their livelihoods have been shaky for the last few years. The surface oil has,
yes, been captured, but it’s what’s under the oil that is making everyone
worry. Numerous beaches have been destroyed, as well as sea creatures lives.
But now, the fish are edible, jobs near beaches are returning and offshore
drilling has been made possible again (with stricter rules, of course). After a trial and error attempt at trying to
plug a leak that began April 20th, BP finally capped the Macondoo in
July, 86 days after the oil was gushing into the sea. Five months later, it
blew out of control and emptied everything into the sea. Soon after this, the
oil wells were abandoned. These oil wells added up to five million barrels of
oil that had dumped into the gulf. Thus overseeing 3.3 million barrels that
spilled into the Bay of Campeche in 1979. But they soon noticed that they were
wrong on their calculations in September, when they noticed that 185 gallons
had truly been leaked into the sea from the broken well.
The sick black tar began to make landfall in Louisiana, and
then Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Soon after is began to spread onto
tourist beaches, the shorelines of sleepy coastal communities and oozing in to
bays that fishermen have worked in for generations. By August, however, the tar
began dissolving rapidly. But the results of damage are indecisive because of
the massive underwater damage. Thus bringing us into the settlement plan.
What was the cause of this whole thing you ask? The “unsafe
behavior on the rigs”, according to Times. Many different components such as the
blowout preventer and failsafe valves hadn’t been inspected since 2000, thus
going against the guidelines of every three o five years of inspection. The concerns with matinence just ignored the
constant small leaks, till the explosion happened. Then they turned their
attention to plugging the well so they could move it away from the gulf. Obviously,
their trials only came out in error.
We think it’s a lack of bedeviled preparation, organization,
urgency, and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials,
and especially BP. Everyone just overlooked the amount of oil that was flowing
into the gulf, and completely ignored all the leakage that was happening after
it was capped. This made everyone lose faiths in the government’s ability to
handle the spill and ruined our trust with them. The National Oceanic an atmospheric
Administration even asked the White House to make public the worst case of this
accident, but the request was denied.
Soon after in 2010, Obama decide to announce that they would get
involved to fight the spill. They didn’t allow any offshore drilling and an investigation
was thus brought about. This lead to Obama first Oval Office speech where he
announced the account to compensate the victims of the spill.
This spill not only destroyed Mother Nature, but seriously
destroyed our energy sources for the future.
The major concern, however, is the charges made on BP for
the large oil spill that continues to destroy our lands today. BP has recently
been charged of destroying evidence by deleted text messages of the documented
oil that as spilled. The engineer, Kurt Mix, was charged with the counts of obstruction
of justice. Officials were led to believe that this was related to the massive
explosion of Deep-water Horizon. Mr. Mix, according to the Times, “was involved
in efforts to monitor and stop the oil leaking forum the well following the
accident.” Obviously, he didn’t do a very good job. In the long run, BP was
ultimately responsible for the accident and would be charged for their fatal
mistakes, as well as the contractors, Transocean, which owned the drilling rig.
Many officials are even saying that it
would cost 7.8 billion dollars to fix all of the damaged done. Over 14 billion
has already been given to respond to the spill. Thus putting our nation more at
risk for a worse economy than we already are in .
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