BP Deepwater Horizon: Lessons Learned from Control and Fast Response Approach

BP DEEPWATER HORIZON
BP Deepwater Horizon
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BP DEEPWATER HORIZON
Table of Contents
Introduction:...................................................................................................................2
Discussion:.....................................................................................................................2
1.1 Preoccupation with failure:..................................................................................3
1.2 Mindfulness:.........................................................................................................3
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................4
References:.....................................................................................................................5

2BP DEEPWATER HORIZON
Introduction:
Deepwater Horizon oil spill is the massive industrial disaster which began on the 20
April 2010 and the location of the disaster was the Gulf of Mexico near the Mississippi River
delta on the BP operated Macondo prospect (Michel et al., 2013). This disaster considered as
the largest oil spill of marine till the date. The petroleum industry got heavily affected by the
disaster as this oil spill was 8% to 31% more than the last largest oil spill in the world. After
several failed attempts the oil well declared seal on 19 September 2010 (Michel et al., 2013).
At the time of the oil spill, the BP was drilling the well 5,000 feet below from the sea
level. The disaster happened at 9:45 P.M. CDT when the final phase of the drilling was going
on. The main cause of the oil spill was the methane gas. At the time of the digging, high
pressurized methane gas released from the well, and then it ignited for an unknown reason
and exploded. When the explosion happened, total 126 members were on the board out of
seven were the employees of the BP. The Deepwater Horizon burned for a total 36 hours and
then it sank into the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven peoples were killed by the explosion and total
4.9 million of barrels of crude oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico (Valentine et al., 2014).
Discussion:
The BP Deepwater Horizon is one of the massive disasters in the history of the
petroleum industry. The oil extracted from the disaster flowed about 87 days, and the loss
amount for the BP was near about 62 billion of US dollars which were half of the valuation of
the organization (Montagna et al., 2013). This losses from the disaster could have been
reduced if right steps were taken at that time. These steps are explained in a very good
manner in the Terry Cooke-Davies’ book Aspects of Complexity. According to Loch and
Payne control and fast response is the one of the features which can be used in this type of
disaster management system. The authors stated that the control and the fast response is a