ABSTRACT
On April 20, 2010, The Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil drilling rig, blew up. The rig, which was located approximately 400 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico, was drilling what is called an “exploratory well” almost one mile below the ocean’s surface. Just before 10 a.m. on the 20th, highly pressurized methane gas burst out of the drill column and then caught fire. Most of the people who were working on the rig were rescued. But eleven people were never found. They are presumed dead. The fire raged for a day and a half, until on the morning of April 22nd, the crippled rig sank. On April 23rd, the company that leased the well, BP (formerly known as British Petroleum), reported that there was no oil leaking from either the sunken rig or the well. By the 24th, however, it was clear that BP was mistaken. No one knows for certain how many gallons of oil leaked from the wellhead before it was finally capped on July 15, 2010. But experts agree that the spill was the largest in U.S. history, far surpassing the Exxon Valdez spill that dominated headlines for a time in 1989. In all, hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. In the weeks and months after the explosion, the effects of the spill became obvious. Thousands of square miles of ocean were soiled with oil, endangering fish and other wildlife. In June, oil reached the Louisiana coast. By early July, oil had reached Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas.
