Oil Spill

100 million barrels of oil. That is how many barrels of oil the world consumes in a single day. And if the world consumes that much oil, there must be an equal or more amount of oil being produced. And if there is that much oil being produced, there are bound for accidents to happen. One of those accidents is called oil spills, where the oil from the oil rig spills out into the environment. Today, I will be introducing you to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the biggest oil spill in the world’s history. Without further ado, let us begin.

First of all, I will inform you of how and why it happened. I believe that the BP oil spill happened because people weren’t careful enough, and I will tell you why. The main reasons were that the blowout preventer, a system that prevents a blowout, an uncontrolled release of well fluids, failed to work. The well fluids, a mixture of crude oil, natural gas, and water that are commonly found when drilling down the seafloor, went up the pipe where it transports oil up. It went up undetected and eventually went up above the blowout preventer. The people noticed it then and activated a system in the blowout preventer that closes a drill pipe. It worked, but the well fluids already up the drill pipe kept going up until it ignited, damaging the people on it and rendering them unable to control the situation. But another problem was brewing under the pipe ram. The fluids kept coming from the seafloor, but the space was closed, making the pipe build pressure. Eventually, the pipe bent, which caused the emergency system that activates when the oil rig loses power to not work properly. Because of it, the oil went into the ocean. But how does this prove that people weren’t careful enough? There was a report in 2001 that said that the blowout preventer in the Macondo well, along with many others, had a flaw and had a 45% chance to fail in a case of a blowout, but the BP company did not listen and kept going. This proves that people weren’t careful, as they knew about the dangers but did not try to improve it.

Next, about the effects. Both humans and wildlife got impacted by the BP oil spill. According to an article published in National Geographic, The BP company paid 20 billion dollars for the damage, and 13 billion of it was used for restoration and further research on the oil spills and the ocean. It led to huge advances in oil spills and the geology of the Gulf of Mexico. But the ecosystem around the spill got ruined. The video “What Happens After An Oil Spill?” informs that oil causes mammals with fur such as otters to lose their insulating ability, while the birds lose their repellency of water on their feathers. This causes them to die out due to hypothermia. They also informed that wildlife, in general, gets lower reproduction rates. The fishes get fin erosion and other negative effects.

Finally, I will talk about the solution. Oil spills, once happened, are very hard to clean up. According to What Happens After An Oil Spill?, there are methods to clean up oil spills, but they often are hard, ineffective, and take a lot of time to complete. Moreover, the cleanups could impact the ecosystem more than the oil spill itself. Because of this, we should focus on preventing oil spills rather than cleaning them up. Since the BP oil spill happened from the blowout preventer not working, it proves that it can be prevented. According to the article “We still don’t know the full impacts of the BP oil spill, 10 years later”, there have been rules set by the BSEE where it requires the blowout preventer in an oil rig to be inspected by a third party member. We should have more rules like these that reinforce safety protocols. Also, switching from oil to renewable energies would work as it removes the need to produce oil, and if there are no oil rigs, there cannot be any accidental oil coming from oil rigs.

In conclusion, the BP oil spill was caused because of people not being careful enough, and the effects still impact us today. And because cleaning up oil spills requires effort and is not very effective, we should focus on preventing them from happening. Reinforcing safety protocols and changing from oil to renewable energy as our primary source can be possible solutions. But those solutions, as of now, are hard to make happen. We should learn from the disaster of the BP oil spill and dedicate ourselves to making sure oil spills like it do not happen again.