Deepwater Horizon Failure

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Abstract. On 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, located off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded with 126 people aboard oil spill quickly became one of the largest accidental release of oil in the world affecting us humans, animals, and the environment. Our group decided to pick this topic because the nature of this accident was unlike anything seen before. We want to know what lead to the failure, how it developed, and what the end result was. Around 210 of million US gallons leaked from a burst pipe one mile underwater into the ocean. In the search of this information we found out that BP or British Petroleum is the third largest energy company in the world1 and the sixth largest company by revenue producing $353.568 …show more content…
High-pressure methane gas from the well expanded into a drilling rig operated and owned by Transocean (support company that specialized in deep water drilling). However, the blowout preventer failed since a flawed well plan did not include enough cement between the 7-inch production casing and the 9 7/8-inch protection casing which was done by Halliburton.6 The aftermath was horrendous, for 87 straight days, oil and methane gas were emitted from an uncapped wellhead spilling approximately 210 million US gallons, 1 mile below the surface of the ocean. The clean-up effort was as large as well containing two drilling ships, 835 skimmers and approximately 9000 vessels were involved in the cleanup with over 47,849 personnel/responders assigned to help with the efforts.4 These findings insinuate that a series of engineering failures with lack of consideration of the consequences and weak government oversight of the complex technical challenge of drilling deep lead to the Deepwater Horizon

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