Deepwater Horizon Incident: Safety System Failure and Risk Analysis

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DEEPWATER HORIZON 1
Executive Summary
BP is a Britain based company who has acquired a right to drill the U.S water to extract
petroleum from U.S Minerals Management services in March 2009. On 20 April 2010, the
big explosion has taken place in which 11 employees were lost their lives. The explosion is a
result of the operational failure of the company. The explosion has left their impact on the
environment and on the people who are involved directly or indirectly with the Prospect. This
report is designed to understand the complete incident, the reason of failure and to find out
some preventive measures.

DEEPWATER HORIZON 2
Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Description of incident and cause of event............................................................................................3
Description of incident in relation to failures in safety system..............................................................5
Preventive measures taken and Recommendations................................................................................6
Review...................................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8
References.............................................................................................................................................9

DEEPWATER HORIZON 3
Introduction
The Macondo prospect was situated at 52 miles south of the Venice Port in Gulf of Mexico.
The site nearly about 5000 feet underneath the ocean level and having a great potential for
extraction petroleum, but at some level the site was at very hazardous place. The level of
natural gas was very high which made the work of drilling very challenging. The drilling in
ultra-deep water and deep water has arrived as a most economical, profitable and
technologically feasible in mid 2000s, due to high price of crude oil in the international
market (Mason, et.al. 2014). In 2009 on 19 March, BP has taken the privileges of operating
Macondo Prospect from the U.S Minerals Management services. The Minerals Management
services as an oil regulatory body issued permit to BP to drill on U.S waters and in return, the
BP will give then a royalty revenue. BP was the principle developer of the prospect and held
65% shares of the project (Sammarco, et.al. 2013). Everything is going well but on 20 April
2010 world’s biggest oil explosion taken place at the Macondo Prospect that is well known as
the Deepwater Horizon. The explosion is the result of a failure in the operation of the BP.
This report is developed to understand the full incident and the cause behind the explosion,
the description of the failure and in addition, some prevention and recommendations were
provided.
Description of incident and cause of event
The oil-drilling rig Deepwater Horizon is an incident that was taken place in the Macondo
Prospect at Gulf of Mexico. Sank and exploded was taken place on 20 April 2010 that was
result in the death of 11 labours of Deepwater Horizon. The cap of oil remains opened for
over 87 days and the oil spill continues during the period around 4.9 million barrels of oil
streamed from the damaged Macondo well and lastly on 15 July 2010 the well was capped