The Deepwater Horizon disaster set new records for holding polluters to account. But it had much less impact on laws regulating offshore drilling or US oil dependence.
Oil sheen in a Louisiana marsh that was heavily affected by the 2010 BP spill, Sept. 27, 2013.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
F. Joel Fodrie, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill caused widespread damage in the Gulf of Mexico, but some parts of this complex ecosystem fared better than others.
A satellite image of the oil slick as it looked in late May 2010, a month after the Deepwater Horizon well exploded. The oil plume looks grayish white.
NASA/Goddard/Jen Shoemaker and Stu Snodgrass
Donald Boesch, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
The BP Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20, 2010 triggered the largest offshore oil spill in history. Ten years later, post-spill reforms are being undone and the Gulf of Mexico remains vulnerable.
Skimming oil in the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon spill, May 29, 2010.
NOAA
Donald Boesch, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
A scientist who served on a national commission to review the 2010 BP oil spill explains why Trump administration efforts to loosen offshore drilling regulation pose major risks for minor payoffs.
U.S. Coast Guard vessels battle the fire on the Deepwater Horizon while searching for survivors from the rig’s 126-person crew.
U.S. Coast Guard/Wikipedia
The new movie ‘Deepwater Horizon’ depicts the blowout that triggered the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A professor of petroleum engineering assesses what the film gets right and wrong.
As BP plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, questions can be asked about whether it has made the right changes to its working practices to avoid a repeat of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.
Offshore oil is not just a risk to the environment – if the world gets serious about mitigating climate change, these resources risk becoming stranded assets.
Green Fire Productions/Flickr
Easter Sunday will mark the fourth anniversary of the BP oil well blowout in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform died and almost five million…
An oil and gas drilling platform offshore from Australia.
CSIRO
If anything good is to come from the devastation caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Australia’s Montara oil and gas leak the year before, it is that we learn from our mistakes…