Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (Environmental day) Thierry

This blog entry is regarding the recent Deepwater Horizon Oil spill, or as it is more commonly known, the BP (British Petroleum) oil spill. The BP Oil spill is a massive ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, now considered the largest offshore oil spill in the US history. The gusher is estimated to be flowing at 12000 to 100000 barrels per day. gThe spill was a result of a sea floor oil gusher that came with the April 20 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. Of present, the oil spill has been closely scrutinized by the media, largely due to BP's questionable response to the oil spill, and the environmental threat the oil spill poses.

While BP officials say that everything possible has been done, a recent review done by Associated Press writers, of BP's 582 page regional spill plan for the Gulf of Mexico , tell a different story. The review revealed a number of shocking errors and omissions in BP's spill response plans, reflecting on the companies preparedness and seriousness with dealing with an oil spill.

For example, BP's response plans include Dr. Peter Lutz, a Florida professor listed as a wildlife expert for a Gulf oil spill, who had died 4 years before the response plan was published.

The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as "sensitive biological resources", despite the fact that none of these animals live anywhere close to the Gulf.

The ongoing Oil Spill is around 10 times worse than the spill scenarios depicted in the documents, in which fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine and water quality is only a temporary problem.

The website listed for Marine Spill Response Corp, one of the two firms that BP relies on for equipment to clean a spill, links to a defunct Japanese website. These are just among the many errors and oversights in BP's oil spill response plan.

While the credibility of BP continues to come in to question with every unsuccessful attempt to cap the oil spill, the situation continues to spiral with BP's response. In an interview with BBC a month ago, BP's chief executive officer, Tony Hayward, shifted the blame to the US owner of the sunken drilling rig, Transocean, saying that "This was not our accident...This was not our drilling rig... This was Transocean's rig. Their systems. Furthermore, Tony Hayward's comment that "There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I'd like my life back", caused a public outrage, as his comments were insensitive of the 11 workers who died in the oil rig explosion, and their families.

Experts fear that the spill will result in an environmental disaster. Although Hayward insisted that the environmental impact of the oil spill would be "very very modest" on May 18 2010, expert opinion and present statistics beg to differ. As of June 7, dead animals found in the spill zone include 594 dead birds, 250 sea turtles, 30 dolphins and other mammals, and 1 reptile. The spill threatens the ecology around the gulf area due to factors such as petroleum toxicity and oxygen depletion