Averting a deep-sea disaster

It’s been two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In April 2010, an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, on BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, killed 11 people, injured 17 others and triggered the worst environmental catastrophe in history: the escape of 4.9 million barrels of crude oil - some 780,000m3 - from the blown-out wellhead.

Even after the well was finally killed, five months after the blowout, the extent of the catastrophe wasn’t clear. Balls of tar were continuing to wash up on the coast of Louisiana the following January; as late as last month, oil was washing up along 200 miles of the Louisiana coast. In March of this year, a persistent seep of oil was reported near the stricken oil well. Meanwhile, reports of damage to wildlife and the livelihoods of local people are still coming in.

Deepwater Horizon presents a major challenge to the oil industry. As more and more of the ‘easy oil’, in shallow water or in wells accessible from land, begins to tail off, exploration and production has to shift to increasingly difficult sources, and deepwater drilling, on seabeds some kilometres down, is going to become more common.