As someone who grew up on the Gulf Coast, I watched with horror as the disaster unfolded, finding it hard to look away from the live stream of the wellhead as it spewed crude from the ocean floor. I finished law school less than a month after the explosion and in the fall of 2010 began practicing with the environmental practice group of a Houston-based firm whose client base relied heavily on the energy sector.
Deepwater horizon oil spill full#
In honor of both the 10 th anniversary of the explosion and the 50 th anniversary of Earth Day (both falling in the same week), I started re-reading the report released six months after the explosion by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (National Commission or Deepwater Horizon Commission), realizing as I did that I never read the full report. To understand the full impact of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda it helps to step back and look at how and why rules being changed were developed in the first place. But tracking these individual changes happening now tells only part of the story.
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We’ve been documenting the relentless march of deregulatory activity in the Trump administration as various agencies systematically work to unravel environmental protections developed during President Obama’s two terms. These reviews resulted in further reforms designed to have a more lasting impact on the safety of future operations, including a major agency reorganization and ultimately new safety and environmental requirements.Īt EELP, we track a wide range of environmental regulatory rollbacks pursued by the current administration. These started with immediate emergency actions to halt production and provide space and time to deal with the emergency, followed by investigations of the incident and various reviews of the regulatory structures that contributed to the missteps leading to this disaster.
Deepwater horizon oil spill series#
It also sparked a series of regulatory actions. The disaster sparked significant litigation and a record settlement in 2015. Government, research centers, and industry worked together (not always smoothly) to stop the flow of oil and gas into the Gulf, a massive undertaking, followed by a heroic cleanup effort. The emergency required a massive response from the government, industry, and the public and had immediate and lasting impacts on coastal communities across the Gulf.
The explosion killed eleven workers, sent oil and natural gas flowing into the Gulf for 87 days, and proved to be one of the most challenging technical emergencies industry and government response teams have faced. Exactly two weeks ago (April 20 th) was the tenth anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and blowout of the Macondo well it was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
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