Written by J.K.
It had been like a swift blow to the stomach; hard and without warning.
On April 20, the Macondo oil well exploded underneath the Deepwater Horizon rig, allowing a grand total of roughly 49,000,00 gallons of crude oil to escape into the Gulf of Mexico. The rig itself had exploded, burned, and sunk. Eleven of the crew members hadn’t escaped with their lives. Despite the many defences that had been set up for this kind of disaster, every one of them had failed that night, resulting in the greatest accidental oil spill in history. This disaster was dubbed the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and of course, in such a tragedy, the question of who was to blame would surface. Though British Petroleum (BP), the oil drilling company, may come to mind, BP is not solely responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, as flawed moves from other organizations had aided in the catastrophe. Fingers are pointed at two other organizations, including the Mineral Management Service (MMS), a federal agency that conducts oil rig inspections, and Transocean, a Swiss company who owned and operated the rig. The MMS’s lack of inspection and it’s attempt to cover it up places some blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster onto the MMS, while Transocean’s crew’s ignorance, flawed protocols, and it’s malfunctioning BOP originates Transocean’s blame as well.
Transocean shares a large portion of the blame of the Deepwater Horizon disaster for multiple reasons; Transocean had been responsible for its crew, it’s protocols, and the BOP, all of which had turned out to be defective. Transocean was the Deepwater Horizon’s owner before it burned and sank, and operated other offshore oil rigs as well. While BP is merely the oil drilling company that harvests the crude oil, Transocean holds responsibility for the crew’s training and establishing protocol. As stated in the article, “Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours”, by David Barstow, David Rhode, and Stephanie Saul, “...Transocean, the world’s largest operator of offshore oil rigs, had provided the crew with a detailed handbook on how to respond to signs of a blowout. Yet its emergency protocols often urged rapid action...” (Barstow David Saul 2). As stated in the text, Transocean had established protocols that the crew was to follow swiftly in the case of an emergency. However, these protocols are in fact, flawed. According to the article “How the Rig Crew Responded to the Blowout” on the Deepwater Horizon webpage, hosted by The New York Times, “A chief mechanic and three others in the engine control room are aware of gas on the rig but do not activate an emergency shutdown. They later say that the protocol is to wait for instructions from the bridge” (How the Rig Crew Responded to the Blowout 4). The protocol, created by Transocean, had been to hesitate when activating an emergency shutdown. The emergency shutdown, called the EDS (Emergency Disconnect System) was an action that could have potentially saved the rig and the Gulf of Mexico from the dire accident. The article, “Jimmy Harrell - Deepwater Horizon Explosion”, written by Carole Bos, explains that the “...EDS...disconnects the oil rig from the wellhead. If the rig is disconnected from the oil well, it prevents blowout material - like gas and mud - from reaching an ignition source on the rig... in short... the EDS process is a last-resort method which is used only when absolutely necessary. Even the captain's authority to order an EDS is restricted” (Bos 2,3). If this hadn’t been the protocol established by Transocean, to hesitate when activating an EDS, the disaster could have been easily prevented with the simple push of a button. In addition to Transocean’s flawed protocols, Transocean’s crew made critical mistakes during the blowout that night. They had hesitated at dire moments that required quick action; thinking on one’s feet is expected of a crew member. On the bridge of the rig that night, “gas sensors… [went] off but the bridge… [did] not activate emergency systems that might have prevented gas from spreading or igniting. The crew members on the bridge also… [did] not immediately sound a general alarm to start evacuation. While they inform the engine control room of a well control situation, they tell them nothing about the erupting mud or gas alarms” (How the Rig Crew Responded to the Blowout 3). With no motive presented for these hesitations, Transocean’s crew made effective mistakes that could have been averted, had the crew been better picked and trained. Moreover, Transocean’s crew wasn’t the only thing that had failed that night; The Blowout Preventer (BOP), a piece of equipment that is meant to cut off the flow of the high-pressure oil from the well, had inconveniently malfunctioned. The failure of the BOP was extremely unfortunate; if it had been working that night, this disaster would have been undeniably prevented, save for the crew’s ignorance and Transocean’s faulty protocols. In the testimony of Jimmy Harrell, a man (who shares command) on deck when the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred, Harrell describes how he came to know that the BOP was dysfunctional. In the article, “Jimmy Harrell - Deepwater Horizon Explosion”, Carol Bos writes, “After the first explosion, Jimmy Harrell managed to get himself to the bridge. When he arrived, he could tell there were serious issues with Horizon’s BOP. During the investigation hearing, Jimmy said that the BOP system ‘wasn’t normal.’ Among other things, yellow lights told him that some of its key functions were ‘blocked’, while others were in a neutral” (Bos 3). In short, the BOP had been failing. Transocean had owned the BOP, and the responsibility of checking on the BOP’s function falls upon Transocean itself. Of course, though Transocean is held responsible for their malfunctioning BOP, the blame can be shared with the MMS, who, failed to inspect the rig when they were required to do so.
The Mineral Management Service (MMS) carries the weight of the blame of the Deepwater Horizon disaster as well, because of the lack of inspection and it’s attempt to hide it. The MMS’s job is to conduct oil rig inspections, as these inspections are necessary when declaring that a rig is functional and risk free. However, investigators had found distinguishable gaps between the MMS’s inspections for the Deepwater Horizon rig, despite the MMS’s policy. As reported by the article, “Deepwater Horizon Inspections: MMS Skipped Monthly Inspections On Doomed Rig”, written by Garance Burke and Michael Kunzelman, “The federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was operating safely before it exploded last month [the MMS] fell well short of it’s own policy that inspections be done at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows” (Burke, Kunzelman 1). To be more specific, “...the federal Minerals Management Service [the MMS] conducted at least 16 fewer inspections aboard the Deepwater Horizon than it should have under the policy, a dramatic fall from the frequency of the prior years, according to the agency’s records” (Burke, Kunzelman 1). Not only are these inspection gaps unlawful and unethical, but they endanger the rig and the crew’s safety, and threaten the environment as well. In addition, not only had the MMS failed to inspect the rig according to policy, but it had lied about the dates of their inspections. “Under a revised statement given to the AP on Sunday, MMS officials said the last infraction aboard the rig, which blew up April 20, killing 11 and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in August 2003, not March 2007 as originally stated” (Burke, Kunzelman 1). Because of the MMS’s lies, the lack of inspection couldn’t have been caught earlier, before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and be corrected. Perhaps then, the Deepwater Horizon would still be standing today.
However, BP shares the majority of the blame of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP’s carelessness when it came to providing a plan for when everything else fails is alarming. As stated in the article, “Special Report: Why the BP Oil Rig Blowout Happened”, written by Carl Hoffman, “‘The industry has not developed an oil spill plan for the low probability, high-consequence event when everything fails,’ says Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas” (Hoffman 4). BP’s oil spill plan is non-existent; perhaps if BP had given the thought and time required to crafting a plan, the Deepwater Horizon disaster could have been handled better than it had been. In addition, the text stated, "'In the event of an unanticipated blowout resulting in an oil spill,' read the exploration plan that BP submitted on March 10, 2009, to the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS), which then managed and regulated offshore drilling, 'it is unlikely to have an impact based on the industry-wide standards for using proven equipment and technology for such responses...'" (Hoffman 3,4). This clearly presents BP’s carelessness; According to BP’s plan, they believe that a backup plan isn’t necessary when they have their equipment and technology set into place. Not only this, but the text adds salt to the wound when it states, “In fact, neither BP nor any of its competitors had ‘proven equipment or technology’ or any backup plan for a catastrophic failure at great depth” (Hoffman 4). After BP had openly claimed that a backup plan was unnecessary, it turns out that they had no ‘proven equipment or technology’, which is absurd. If BP had taken the precaution, created a backup plan for the chance of a disaster, and ensured that their technology was reliable as they made it seem, perhaps the oil spill in the Deepwater Horizon disaster could have been handled with much more efficiency.
To sum it up, the Deepwater Horizon disaster hadn’t been prompted by one reason alone; a series of misplaces steps from two other organizations had aided in this unfortunate disaster, including Transocean and the MMS. Transocean’s faulty protocols, it’s crew’s ignorance, and it’s malfunctioning BOP mainspring Transocean’s blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, while the MMS’s lack of inspection and it’s attempt to cover it up burdens the MMS with a fraction of the blame as well. Just as MMS had turned a blind eye to the risks BP was taking, the Obama Administration had ignored the fact that the Macondo oil well was potentially unstable, being the deepest well in the Gulf of Mexico, and handed BP a free pass to drill, according to the article “The Spreading Slick of Blame for the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill” written by Dominic Rushe. Of course, in the midst of all the finger pointing, we must learn from this disaster; It’s better to be safe than sorry, and in this case, everyone who had been sucked into the whirlpool of blame had emerged dripping and wet, and very, very sorry...
Works Cited
ARTICLE 5
Barstow, David, David Rhode and Stephanie Saul, “Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours.”
NYTimes. 25 September 2010,
www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print.
TESTIMONY of Jimmy Harrell
Bos, Carole. "Jimmy Harrell - Deepwater Horizon Explosion." AwesomeStories.com,
Sep 28, 2016, Mar 23, 2017,
https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Jimmy-Harrell-Deepwater-Horizon-
Explosion/1.
ARTICLE 3
Burke, Garance and Michael Kunzelman. Huffington Post, “Deepwater Horizon
Inspections: MMS Skipped Monthly Inspections On Doomed Rig.” 25 May 2011,
www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/16/deepwater-horizon-inspect_n_578079.html
ARTICLE 2
Hoffman, Carl. “Special Report: Why the BP Oil Rig Blowout Happened.” Popular
Mechanics, 2 September 2010,
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a6065/how-the-bp-oil-rig-blow
out-happened/.
ARTICLE 4
Rushe, Dominic. “The Spreading Slick of Blame for the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.”
1 March 2013, state.com.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/01/bp-deepwater-horizon
e-oil-spill.
J.K. is a 16-year-old essay writer from Washington. If you were wondering, yes, J.K. is an alias! They use it in honor of their favorite author, J.K Rowling. When they aren't writing, they can be found playing basketball and going on runs though the park.
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