BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Major oil spills are catastrophic events that immensely affect the environment and society, yet determining their spatial extent is a highly complex task. During the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, ~149,000 km2 of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) was covered by oil slicks and vast areas of the Gulf were closed for fishing. Yet, the satellite footprint does not necessarily capture the entire oil spill extent. Here, we use in situ observations and oil spill transport modeling to examine the full extent of the DWH spill, focusing on toxic-to-biota (i.e., marine organisms) oil concentration ranges. We demonstrate that large areas of the GoM were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures. With a global increase in petroleum production–related activities, a careful assessment of oil spills’ full extent is necessary to maximize environmental and public safety.

Disaster management is cardinal in supply chain management as well as in strategic communication and public relations. This paper examines the BP Oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and explores how rapidly growing social media comes in handy in getting suitable communication to targeted publics. This paper makes the case that traditional news media has become obsolete as it is an outlet for a select elite who massage the content of news. This paper examines the context of the primary and secondary messages which were sent out during the whole episode as well as how best the communication should have been handled strategically. The paper relies on secondary sources to review the case and ends by making recommendations.

Ethical dilemmas frequently appear in society and are defined as “a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two courses of action, either of which entails transgressing a moral principle”.  One of the largest energy companies in the world, having operations in the gas and oil industry is British Petroleum (BP).  Their work includes finding, producing, refining, distributing and selling these products to consumers all over the world market. They also partake in some renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.  In 2009 BP was producing 2.2 million barrels of oil per day and in 2010 BP was producing 2.4 million barrels of oil per day. Due to this staggering production amount, BP is influential in energy consumption all over the world.  BP has had their fair share of ethical dilemmas regarding their environment pollution and unsafe working conditions, the largest being the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill had a significant impact on the environment and BP stakeholders.

In April 2010, a oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, caused an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig operated by BP (formerly British Petroleum) and a vast oil spill into the Gulf waters that lasted for 87 days before being capped. The explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17. The incident is commonly called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout. Within 24 hours, the Coast Guard determined the incident had the potential to become a major environment disaster for the United States.

Archaeologists assessed eight Native American sites on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast for the effects of the MC252 Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Crude oil and dispersant used during the cleanup response were detected in redeposited shoreline midden and intact archaeological contexts. The proximate impacts on the archaeological record include contamination of artifacts, ecofacts, and samples, with the potential for long-term impacts on radiocarbon dating and archaeometry. Pretreatment can mitigate the effects of contaminants on radiocarbon dating and elemental analyses. Other analytical methods, such as absorbed pottery residue analysis, are more adversely effected by a combination of crude oil and dispersant. Integrated cultural resources management planning should take into account the potential effects of an oil spill on archaeological sites, and the increased time and cost expenditures for field and lab research in hazardous conditions and with contaminated collections.

Risk management is an old concept and an ongoing debate from the beginning. Today, businesses are learning hard lessons especially after disastrous events such as BP Deepwater Horizon, naked credit default swaps, and failure of U.S. technology projects. This paper aims to contribute the discussion on examining BP’s approach to risk management in order to identify, assess, control and implement appropriate strategies. Oil-Spill Risk Analysis (OSRA) model has been used in this report to identify and assess the risks in the petroleum industry along with control and containment strategies used by BP to avoid risks of spilt oil. The paper also includes reasoned discussion as how BP should progress in the future with regards to its approach to risk management, especially after the terrible incident of oil spill in Gulf of Mexico.

Schema, broadly defined, is a representative framework or plan. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process began and the scientific community flocked to the Gulf of Mexico to study the spill's impacts. Unfortunately, shipwrecks and other submerged cultural resources were largely ignored. Through Federal and academic partnerships and contracts funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a multidisciplinary team of scientists was assembled to examine the spill's impacts on deepwater shipwrecks and their resident microbial communities. Presented here is the project's "schema": its design and objectives, site selection criteria, and development through partnerships.

The United States Oil Pollution Act 1990 (OPA), contains a provision, s1002(b)(2) , that sets out six categories or kinds of damage that may be recovered from a ‘responsible party’ liable for losses resulting from damage caused by the discharge of oil in United States (US) waters. The provision was drafted with the purpose of facilitating a predictable and just outcome for claimants against such a responsible party.  The central argument of this dissertation is that the intended purpose is undermined by difficulties in interpreting certain of these provisions, and that, if these provisions are to achieve their objective, they require legislative amendment and that such reform is urgent.
The BP Spill highlighted the issue of the lack of clarity in the claims provisions of the OPA as well as revealing the potentially catastrophic and widespread effect that a spill of this magnitude can have.

This article proposes a novel theoretical framework for examining trust-repair discourse. The model identifies two fundamental discourse strategies available to the trust-breaker when trust is at stake (i) to engage with and act upon the discourses that represent a potential source of distrust - neutralize the negative, (ii) to communicate a trustworthy discourse identity - emphasize the positive. These strategies are realized in discourse through the use of dialogic engagement and evaluative/affective language, respectively. The ultimate communicative goal of the strategies is that of promoting the addressees' positive (re-)assessment of the speaker's ability, integrity and benevolence. The model is applied to the analysis of the CEO letter published by BP one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The analysis has the twofold purpose of demonstrating the viability of the model and determining the discourse strategies deployed by the CEO to repair trust in the company after the accident.

Manual corpus annotation facilitates exhaustive and detailed corpus-based analyses of evaluation that would not be possible with purely automatic techniques. However, manual annotation is a complex and subjective process. Most studies adopting this approach have paid insufficient attention to the methodological challenges involved in manually annotating evaluation, in particular concerning transparency, reliability and replicability. This article illustrates a procedure for annotating evaluative expressions in text that facilitates more transparent, reliable and replicable analyses. The method is demonstrated through a case study analysis of APPRAISAL (Martin and White, 2005) in a small-size specialized corpus of CEO letters published by the British energy company BP and four competitors before and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Drawing on Fuoli and Paradis’ (2014) model of trust-repair discourse, it examines how ATTITUDE and ENGAGEMENT resources are strategically deployed by BP’s CEO in the attempt to repair stakeholders’ trust after the accident.

Analysis of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the accumulatory decline of BP demonstrates both the analytical efficacy of the capital-as-power (CasP) approach to value theory, and the irreducible role of objects in the process of accumulation. Rather than productivity per se, accumulation depends on control of productivity. Owners’ control is over both the human and non-human components of systems of production, which transcend the standard categories of culture/politics/economics/technology. Capitalization translates the irreducible social order, things and all, that bear on accumulation into commensurable units of capital. The decline of BP in the wake of the disaster expressed the market’s falling confidence in the obedience of the entities that bear on its profits, including the things that comprise its productive capacity.

Exposure to oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may have lasting impacts on preservation of historic shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. Submerged steel structures, including shipwrecks, serve as artificial reefs and become hotspots of biodiversity in the deep sea. Marine biofilms on submerged structures support settlement of micro and macro-biota and may enhance and protect against corrosion. Disruptions in the local environment, including oil spills, may impact the role that biofilms play in reef preservation. To determine how the Deepwater Horizon spill potentially impacted shipwreck biofilms and the functional roles of the biofilm microbiome, experiments containing carbon steels disks (CSDs) were placed at five historic shipwreck sites located within, and external to the benthic footprint of the Deepwater Horizon spill. The CSDs were incubated for 16 weeks to enable colonization by biofilm-forming microorganisms and to provide time for in situ corrosion to occur. Biofilms from the CSDs, as well as sediment and water microbiomes, were collected and analyzed by 16S rRNA amplicon gene sequencing to describe community composition and determine the source of taxa colonizing biofilms. Biofilm metagenomes were sequenced to compare differential gene abundances at spill-impacted and reference sites. Biofilms were dominated by Zeta-, Alpha-, Epsilon-, and Gamma-proteobacteria. Sequences affiliated with the Mariprofundus and Sulfurimonas genera were prolific, and Roseobacter, and Colwellia genera were also abundant. Analysis of 16S rRNA sequences from sediment, water, and biofilms revealed sediment to be the main known source of taxa to biofilms at impacted sites. Differential gene abundance analysis revealed the two-component response regulator CreC, a gene involved in environmental stress response, to be elevated at reference sites compared to impacted sites within the spill plume fallout area on the seafloor. Genes for chemotaxis, motility, and alcohol dehydrogenases were differentially abundant at reference vs. impacted sites. Metal loss on CSDs was elevated at sites within the spill fallout plume. Time series images reveal that metal loss at a heavily impacted site, the German Submarine U-166, has accelerated since the spill in 2010. This study provides evidence that spill residues on the seafloor may impact biofilm communities and the preservation of historic steel shipwrecks.

It is widely accepted that voluntary corporate responsibility for human rights is a means of continuing 'business-as-usual'. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been denounced as 'whitewash', with little effect in practice. I claim here that voluntary CSR is far worse than 'whitewash': it actively bolsters corporate impunity by rendering the violence of development illegible and equating resistance with irrationality or subversion. It thrives upon the state of exception that provides the permissive context of human rights violations. I make this argument by returning to the birthplace of corporate responsibility for human rights: BP's Colombian oilfields, combining ethnographic research with trenchant critique of the colonial myths informing mainstream discussion of business and human rights. The UN has responded to the potential of voluntary CSR to detract from abuses by emphasising the importance of judicial remedy. What the analysis here reveals is how voluntary measures and provision for judicial remedy may work in opposite directions.

La responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) ha sido acusada de ser una fachada de limitados efectos en la realidad. En este artículo, aduzco que la RSC es peor aún: refuerza activamente la impunidad empresarial, ya que rinde ininteligible la violencia del desarrollo y tilda toda resistencia de irracional o subversiva. Se alimenta de un estado de excepción que proporciona un contexto propicio a las violaciones de DDHH. Regreso al origen de la responsabilidad corporativa respecto a los DDHH: los campos petrolíferos colombianos de BP, para combinar la investigación etnográfica con una crítica incisiva de la mitología colonial que da forma al debate sobre empresas y DDHH. La ONU ha reconocido que la RSC voluntaria tiene el potencial de ocultar los abusos, subrayando la importancia del recurso judicial cuando las medidas voluntarias no alcancen. No obstante, este artículo subraya que las medidas voluntarias y jurídicas pueden servir distintos fines.

On April 20, 2010, the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil rig resulted in the loss of 11 lives and the largest oil spill in US history (Graham et al., 2010) and perhaps the second largest in the world, after the first Gulf War Oil Spill from Kuwait. Over the 84 days following the explosion, an estimated 6.7 x 105 mT of Louisiana Sweet Crude oil (United States Government, 2011) and up to 500,000 mT of methane and gases (Joye et al., 2011) were released from 1,480 m below the ocean's surface into the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). As oil continued to escape from the seafloor throughout the summer of 2010, images of oiled wildlife pervaded the news. These pictures, though troubling, only hinted at the fate of the plankton that form the foundation of the GoM ecosystem. This review discusses the potential effects of the DWH oil spill on the overlooked, but extremely important, members of the GoM ecosystem—the plankton. Our assessment is based on data collected in the aftermath of the DWH spill and supplemented with studies from past oil spills when information on the GoM spill was limited or unavailable. The time line we develop traces the spill from a "planktonic perspective," emphasizing the population dynamics of marine bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish larvae.

Following the blowout of the Macondo well, a pulse in sedimentation resulted in changes in sedimentary redox conditions. This is demonstrated by downcore and temporal changes in the concentration of redox sensitive metals: Mn, Re, and Cd. Sediment cores collected in the NE Gulf of Mexico (GoM) reveal increased sedimentation after the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout. The formation of mucous-rich marine snow in surface waters and subsequent rapid deposition to underlying sediments is the likely cause. Respiration of this material resulted in decreased pore-water oxygen concentration and a shoaled redoxcline, resulting in two distinct Mn peaks in sediments following the event, one typically in the top 10 mm, with the other at 20–30 mm. Most cores near the wellhead reveal this non-steady state behavior for up to two years after the event. Associated with the Mn minimum between the two Mn peaks, a modest (15–30%) enrichment of Re consistent with reducing sediments typically exists. A three-year time series of three stations following the event reveal that sediment Re increased 3–4 times compared to the pre-impact baseline value for two years, indicating sediments are increasingly more reducing for two years. In the third year, Re concentration decreased, suggesting a return towards pre-impact conditions. In select sites where the density of benthic foraminifera was determined, an assemblage-wide decrease occurred coincident with reducing conditions as determined by redox sensitive metals, demonstrating the important consequences of changing redox conditions on benthic ecosystems. Determination of redox sensitive metals will continue to constrain the temporal evolution of reducing conditions, which will serve to document the long-term effects of the spill, and the possible return to pre-event conditions.

In May 1942, the Gulf of Mexico was the deadliest waterbody in the world as German U-boats wrought havoc on Allied merchant vessels, sinking on average one Allied vessel per day. In total, 24 U-boats entered the Gulf battlefield during World War II (WWII), sinking 56 Allied vessels but losing only one of their own, U-166. This Type IXC U-boat carrying 58 officers and crewmen sank, now resting in 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) of water and less than one mile from its last victim, the passenger freighter Robert E. Lee.

Exposure to crude oil or its individual constituents can have detrimental impacts on fish species , including impairment of the immune response. Increased observations of skin lesions in northern Gulf of Mexico fish during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill indicated the possibility of oil-induced immunocompromisation resulting in bacterial or viral infection. This study used a full factorial design of oil exposure and bacterial challenge to examine how oil exposure impairs southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) immune function and increases susceptibility to the bacteria Vibrio anguillarum, a causative agent of vibriosis. Fish exposed to oil prior to bacterial challenge exhibited 94.4% mortality within 48 hours of bacterial exposure. Flounder challenged with V. anguillarum without prior oil exposure had <10% mortality. Exposure resulted in taxonomically distinct gill and intestine bacterial communities. Mortality strongly correlated with V. anguillarum levels, where it comprised a significantly higher percentage of the microbiome in Oil/Pathogen challenged fish and was nearly non-existent in the No Oil/Pathogen challenged fish bacterial community. Elevated V. anguillarum levels were a direct result of oil exposure-induced immunosuppression. Oil-exposure reduced expression of immunoglobulin M, the major systemic fish antibody, and resulted in an overall downregulation in transcriptome response, particularly in genes related to immune function, response to stimulus and hemostasis. Ultimately, sediment-borne oil exposure impairs immune function, leading to increased incidences of bacterial infections. This type of sediment-borne exposure may result in long-term marine ecosystem effects, as oil-bound sediment in the northern Gulf of Mexico will likely remain a contamination source for years to come.

The 2010 BP (formerly British Petroleum) Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill was the largest environmental disaster in the history of the United States (Belanger et al., 2010]. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most important and biologically diverse environments in the world, a nursery for thousands of marine species, with numerous endemic organisms inhabiting its warm waters. Gulf seafood is an important source of food for millions of people in North America, and, since marine species migrate by following the Gulf Stream, people throughout Europe also rely on these fish for protein. From an ecological and economic standpoint, the DWH spill could not have occurred in a more disastrous location.

Citizen journalism is more accessible than ever, through a range of both independent and commercial online platforms. But is it just an echo of traditional news? This content analysis investigated whether such news fits alternative journalism’s characteristics, comparing BP oil spill coverage from blogs, Indymedia, and CNN’s user-driven iReport. Indymedia was most alternative in hyperlinking, mobilizing information, contesting mainstream versions, and tone. iReport coverage mirrored most mainstream ideals, but not in author-audience interaction or sourcing habits. Blogs’ reporting styles differed sharply from one another. In evaluating publishing platforms side by side, this study locates each along the continuum of merging practices.

Major oil spills are catastrophic events that immensely affect the environment and society, yet determining their spatial extent is a highly complex task. During the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, ~149,000 km2 of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) was covered by oil slicks and vast areas of the Gulf were closed for fishing. Yet, the satellite footprint does not necessarily capture the entire oil spill extent. Here, we use in situ observations and oil spill transport modeling to examine the full extent of the DWH spill, focusing on toxic-to-biota (i.e., marine organisms) oil concentration ranges. We demonstrate that large areas of the GoM were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures. With a global increase in petroleum production–related activities, a careful assessment of oil spills’ full extent is necessary to maximize environmental and public safety.

The issues of Oil/Gas Spillage has been on the rise all over the World, mostly in Africa, however, applying the recommended approach in this Book using PRINCE2 Project Management Techniques represents a fascinating extra value tool in addressing these spillage issues which is occasionally caused by mechanical/tools failures, pipeline corrosion and other factors. This Book analyses risks involved in petroleum exploration and production operations and introduced Project Management Methodology and Techniques as a major tool to prevent and manage spillage risks associated with Oil & Gas operations. The Author used both quantitative and qualitative method to substantiate facts, with extensive study/review of various academic publications on the subject matter. It used the form of a survey questionnaire and interviews to get current views and recommendation on the subject. The Book is highly recommended for all Oil & Gas Drilling, Exploration, Production, Oil Servicing and Oil Wellhead Ma...

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred in spring and summer 2010 in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Research cruises in 2010 (approximately 2–3 months after the well had been capped), 2011, and 2014 were conducted to determine the initial and subsequent effects of the oil spill on deep-sea soft-bottom infauna. A total of 34 stations were sampled from two zones: 20 stations in the “impact” zone versus 14 stations in the “non-impact” zone. Chemical contaminants were significantly different between the two zones. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons averaged 218 ppb in the impact zone compared to 14 ppb in the non-impact zone. Total petroleum hydrocarbons averaged 1166 ppm in the impact zone compared to 102 ppm in the non-impact zone. While there was no difference between zones for meiofauna and macrofauna abundance, community diversity was significantly lower in the impact zone. Meiofauna taxa richness over the three sampling periods averaged 8 taxa/sample in the impact zone, compared to 10 taxa/sample in the non-impact zone; and macrofauna richness averaged 25 taxa/sample in the impact zone compared to 30 taxa/sample in the non-impact zone. Oil originating from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill reached the seafloor and had a persistent negative impact on diversity of soft-bottom, deep-sea benthic communities. While there are signs of recovery for some benthic community variables, full recovery has not yet occurred four years after the spill.

The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill took place over 180,000 square kilometers during a 12- week period over five years ago; however, this event continues to influence the development and distribution of organisms in and around the region of the disaster. Here we examine fish species that may have been most affected by noting their past distribution
in the region of the spill and examining data of known collecting events over the last 10 years (five years prior to the spill, five years post spill).

During the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, photooxidation of surface oil led to the formation of persistent photooxidized compounds, still found in shoreline sediments a decade later. Studies demonstrated that photooxidation modified both biodegradation rates of the surface oil and the effectiveness of aerial dispersant applications. Despite the significant consequences of this weathering pathway, the lack of measurements prevented photooxidation to be accounted for in the DWH oil budget calculations and in most predictive models. Here we develop a Lagrangian photooxidation module that estimates the dose of solar radiation individual oil droplets receive while moving in the ocean, quantifies the likelihood of photooxidative changes, and continues to track the transport of these persistent photooxidized compounds. We estimate and track the likelihood of photooxidation of Lagrangian oil droplets in the upper layers of the water column for the DWH case by coupling the net shortwave radiation from NOGAPS to the oil application of the Connectivity Modeling System (oil-CMS). The dose of solar radiation upon a droplet is computed with the intensity of the incoming irradiance at the ocean's surface, the light attenuation coefficient, and the depth of the oil droplets. Considering a range of DWH empirical irradiance thresholds, we find that photooxidation can happen at short time scales of hours to days, in agreement with the new paradigm of oil photooxidation. Furthermore, the oxidized compounds are likely to form in a 110 km radius around the response site, suggesting that the oil reaching the coastline was already photooxidized. This new dynamic coupling provides a powerful tool to test oil weathering hypotheses, refine the oil budget during the DWH, and ultimately inform rapid response in future oil spills.

***Highly recommended for Oil/Gas Companies and Post Graduates Students (Masters & PhD) in the U.K and other parts of the World.***
Book Title: Project Management Techniques for Oil Spillage Prevention & Management

Author: Felix Ebidouwei Bomabebe

ISBN-13: 978-613-9-94693-8
ISBN-10: 613994693X
EAN: 9786139946938
Book language: English

Blurb/Shorttext:
The issues of Oil/Gas Spillage have been on the rise all over the World, mostly in Africa, however, applying the recommended approach in this Book using PRINCE2 Project Management Techniques represents a fascinating extra value tool in addressing these spillage issues which is occasionally caused by mechanical/tools failures, pipeline corrosion and other factors. This Book analyses risks involved in petroleum exploration and production operations and introduced Project Management Methodology and Techniques as a major tool to prevent and manage spillage risks associated with Oil & Gas operations. The Author used both quantitative and qualitative method to substantiate facts, with extensive study/review of various academic publications on the subject matter. It used the form of a survey questionnaire and interviews to get current views and recommendation on the subject. The Book is highly recommended for all Oil & Gas Drilling, Exploration, Production, Oil Servicing and Oil Wellhead Maintenance Companies and their employees all over the World.

Publishing house: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing
Website: https://www.lap-publishing.com/
By (author) : Felix Ebidouwei Bomabebe
Number of pages: 100
Published on: 2018-12-11
Stock: Available
Category: Other
Price: 54.90 €

Keywords: Project Management, SPILLAGE RISKS, Petroleum Exploration, OIL SPILLAGE MITIGATION, Project Management Techniques.

Purchase Link: www.get-morebooks.com