Deepwater Oil Spill: Exploring the Causes, Risks, and Response to the Environmental Disaster

Running Head: DEEPWATER OIL SPILL 0
Occupational Health & Safety
Student Details
3/14/2019

Deepwater Oil Spill 1
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Risk Management Process.........................................................................................................2
Background............................................................................................................................2
Response to the Disaster........................................................................................................3
Risk Management in Petroleum Industry...............................................................................4
Risk management Approach of BP........................................................................................4
Risk Assessment and Control.................................................................................................5
Oil Spill Risk Factors Identification..................................................................................5
Risk Analysis using Hazard Analysis................................................................................5
Risk Control Strategies of BP............................................................................................6
Progress of BP in Future....................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Organizations are facing various unsystematic and systematic risks due to different
kind of changes in environment and climate, political and regulatory policies, credit risks,
natural tragedies, and foreign exchange and interest rates. (NCSU, 2010).
There was an explosion and subsequent fire happened at the Gulf of Mexico in
Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig. This resulted in burning of rig and thus sinks into
the water causing the massive oil spill. This huge explosion resulted in the death of 11 men.
This incident is considered as the largest and worst environmental accidental oil spill in
history of America. It took around three months to cap the well finally on 15 July 2010. By
the time the well was capped finally, 5 million barrels of oil had flattered into the Gulf (EPA,
2019). This disaster described the associated complications and risks with deepwater drilling
operations. After some weeks of explosion, Interior Department of U.S appointed a
committee from National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council to identify
the causes of this accident and determine the measures which can be implemented to prevent
such devastation in the future (King, 2010).
This report discusses about the identification, analyses, evaluation, treatment, and
monitoring of risks associated with the deepwater drilling operations.
Risk Management Process
Background
In November 2010, the committee appointed by U.S department of Interior presented the
report of its findings. The findings of committee described three causes of this mishap:
 Old-fashioned structure of organization;

Deepwater Oil Spill 3
 A prolonged scarcity of resources; and
 Lack of adequate technological proficiency (Cholan, Makin, & Smith, 2017).
According to the media reports of U.S, the exploding bubble of methane gas due to lethal
blast on oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was the core reason behind this accident. Also some eye
witnesses and previous month accounts of BP indicated oil leakage of thousands of barrels.
These facts show ignorance of some serious facts and lowest safety measures implementation
in drilling offshore oil well (Burggren, Dubansky, Roberts, & Alloy, 2015).
Response to the Disaster
Planning process of Oil Spill Response established an oil spill response strategy. The
strategy framework of BP included oil spill response framework along with processes and
actions of the project (Beever & Hess, 2016). Below is the figure which shows the process
overview during the operational phase as followed by BP.
Source: (Muscato, 2019)