Offshore Oil Drilling (Gulf Oil Spill)

The worst accidental marine oil spill in history began on April 20, 2010, with an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean and leased by British Petroleum (BP). The rig was drilling for oil in the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, and at the time of the accident a production casing was being installed by the Halliburton Energy Company. The explosion and subsequent fire resulted in 11 deaths and numerous injuries to men working on the platform while also setting off a gusher that poured an estimated 4.9 billion barrels of oil into the ocean before being successfully capped on July 15.

The oil from this spill first made landfall ...