Pil Spill in the World: BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill
Name
Instructor
Date
Introduction
There have been many incidences of oil spill in the world. There are various causes of oil spill. Oil tankers hit reefs or are caught in storms and sink, poorly maintained oil pipelines leak, offshore oil wells burst into flames or deliberate spilling like the case of what happened in the Arabian Gulf. These oil spills cause environmental disasters. This paper is going to focus on the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its implications. It will also discuss the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, why it was enacted, its general provision and its effectiveness in containing major spills.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill began on 20th April 2010 following the explosion of a deepwater horizon oil rig. The explosion came about as a result of pressure buildup of methane, which steadily moved within the oil rig and triggered an ignition, which subsequently brought about the explosion. It took nearly 3 months for it to be stopped (Crone & Tolstoy, 2010). Approximately five million barrels of crude oil were let out from the rig and directly into the sea water. This constitutes what is arguably the world's worst accidental marine pollution in history. BP disputed those figures by claiming the government overestimated them even though released internal e-mails from one of their employee’s estimates confirmed these figures.
Using remotely operated underwater vehicles BP attempted to curb the oil leakage through making attempts to shut out the blowout preventer valves on the wellhead but they were unsuccessful. They decided to pipe the oil to a capacity vessel by setting a 125-tone control arch over the biggest hole, but this too, was unsuccessful. On July 15th 2010, a device of a bigger measurement than the streaming channel was attached to a rib that rushed to the highest point of the victory preventer and a manual valve set to shut off the stream once connected.
The spill is also described as the worst environmental disaster in the United States due to the negative implications that followed it. Marine life was affected by this oil spill as so were the beaches. Spill water contained a lot more of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as compared to the initial amounts before the leakage (Farrell, 2011). PAHs endanger both huma...