Introduction of the 2010 Deep Water Horizon Accident

            The marine oil drilling history has recorded various kinds of incidents, and one of the prominent incident happened in 2010. Deepwater Horizon was an oil drilling rig located at the oilfield of Macondo Prospect, which is actually part of the U.S Gulf of Mexico. It was 20^th of April in 2010, when a normal day at Deepwater Horizon proved to be a disastrous one. First of all, the oil drilling rig exploded, and then it sank into the water. In result of this horrific incident, 11 people working on the site faced death. It is said that in marine oil drilling history, it is one of the largest incident in terms of spill of oil. Once the Deepwater Horizon was exploded, there was impossible to stop the flowing of oil from the site, and for next 87 days after the incident, more than 4m barrels of oil was spilled over or flowed, which is a huge amount of oil, being wasted into the water. It took 87 days for the authorities to recover from this damage, and on 15^th July, they were finally able to cap this oil rigging site. The U.S Government strongly believed that incident happened due to negligence of BP Exploration & Production, so a case was filed against them and other alleged parties for their irresponsible duty, which lead to this horrific incident, claiming 11 innocent lives (U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2020)

Background of the Accident

            It is important to dig out the facts to show the background of this accident, which said to be one of the biggest environmental hazard incidents in the history of the United States. It is a well-known fact that when such large scale incidents occur, they don’t happen in a minute or so, rather there are always some background reasons, while pile up and then such incidents happen. Once the investigations were done, a variety of elements were found, which led to this sad incident. A report was published by BP in 2011, which revealed that the primary reason for this accident was the failure of the well integrity. This aspect was followed by another issue, which was losing control of the fluid’s pressure in the well. In such circumstances, where something goes wrong, there are always safety measures and equipment in place to stop the problem, before it turns out to be a disaster. In this oil spill accident, a device named “blowout preventer” was installed to prevent the issue of losing pressure control. But on that day, it was so unlucky to say that the device was not able to perform, what it was supposed to perform. The device was supposed to seal the relevant well automatically, but it could not happen due to unknown reasons. So, when there was no one to stop the pressure, the shot up the ratio of the hydrocarbons was uncontrollable, which was a reason to ignite the well. As the result of this ignition, huge explosions were observed, which totally destroyed the oil field. If this kind of problem would have been identified earlier, or better safety measures would have been there, then such incident might have been prevented (Bryant, 2011)

The Roles and Responsibilities of Safety Supervisors and Employees

            It is a fact that the Deepwater Horizon incident was a question mark on the safety standards, as well as, skills & capabilities of the workers and safety supervisors. There was certain negligence on part of the employees and safety supervisors working on the site. There were a variety of managerial and operational decisions, which were incorrect, thus led to this accident. It was identified that the safety culture of the Deepwater Horizon was not up to the mark, and that’s why it could not prevent this huge mishap. It was found that safety culture at the site was lacking so many required elements from the employees and supervisors. If all the safety elements would have been followed to develop a better safety culture; then things would have been different, what actually happened on the ground. The other important thing to know in this regard is the lack of adequate safety standards adopted by the firm, which was responsible to manage the oil field at that time. It was said that if given safety practices and guidelines would have been followed accordingly to develop a better and safe work environment, and then the incident could have been prevented (Reader and Connor, 2013)

It was found that the management and safety supervisors could not develop operational steps to signal and identify any kind of issues in the process. The communication and signaling process was also flawed. Even it was said that BP was aware of the fault, which was contained by the blowout preventer. If it was true, then it was such huge negligence on part of the management to ignore a huge issue. If this kind of safety equipment is having faults, then it should have been replaced with a new one, or it should have been repaired. But no such effort was noticed in the past. The contingency plan was also having so many faults, and that’s why the response to the incident was miscalculated and flawed. A constant eye on the safety measures and equipment was needed to ensure that everything is working fine, but every responsible worker was involved in some kind of negligence, and that’s why this explosion happened. A better safety work paradigm with focused involvement of safety supervisors would have prevented this accident, or at least it would have minimized its negative effects (Bryant, 2011)

Other Causes of the Accident

            In the earlier discussion, a variety of issues have been discussed, which played their part in this sad accident, killing 11 people. There are few other causes as well, which should be looked at to see how a series of causes led to this accident. One of the causes of this incident was the dodgy cement used in the well. The cement used at the borehole’s bottom was not up to the required standards, so it was not able to prevent the leakage. If cement formulation has been strong, then leakage of the oil and gas would have been impossible. The other cause of this incident was the failure of the valve. The pipe’s bottom to the given surface had two kinds of sealing; one sealing was done by filling it with the cement, and the other sealing was 2 mechanical valves, which were there to make sure that oil and gas flow is stopped from any kind of leakage. But the sad part of the incident is that both cement and valves were failed to prevent the leakage (United States. Congress. House. Committee on Energy and Commerce. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 2013)

            It was also found that workers were involved in testing the various pressures to see, if the well is sealed as per safety standards, or it is having any issues. The results taken from these tests were showing signs of worry, but workers were not able to interpret it properly, which means that results were misinterpreted. So, it was assumed that everything is fine, and well is not going to bear any kind of leakage, but this result was wrong to make any assumptions. It is another story, whether the well was good enough sealed or not, but once the leakage had happened, it should have been spotted a lot earlier than the explosion had happened. There should have been a close eye on the essence of leakage, and if any leakage would have been spotted within time, the incident could have been stopped as well. It is quite shocking to know that leakage continues for around 50 minutes, which is a lot of time to detect any safety or leakage error before the explosion, but safety supervisors were failed to detect this leakage even in 50 minutes' time. Just a few minutes before the explosion, the workers have seen a mixture of gas and mud, and they tried to use a blowout preventer to stop this flow, but this valve was also failed to do its due task. There was no gas alarm installed at the facility, which could have identified leakage, and alarms would have warned the workers that something is wrong with the process (Mullins, 2010)

The Principles of Occupational Risk Assessment in the Workplace

            It is vital to know that the workplace can have so many hazards and risks, which should be measured accordingly so that any kind of incidents is prevented. If the stakeholders would have made sure that principles of occupational risk assessment are followed as per given guidelines, then this kind of huge disaster would never have happened in the history of marine oil drilling. They should have policies in place to assess risks and hazards. They should have also implemented a variety of control and risk measures so that if one measure fails to perform, the other one comes up with the indication. Moreover, all risk assessment measures should also be checked and tested every now and then to see, if they are working properly or not. If risk measures would have any issues, those issues can be identified during the testing. These kinds of security measures were needed at the workplace to prevent this incident and save valuable lives of the workers (Khan, Mustaq and Tabassum, 2014)

 References of the 2010 Deep Water Horizon Accident

Bryant, (2011) Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf oil spill - the key questions answered, [Online], Available: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/20/deepwater-horizon-key-questions-answered [17 March 2020].

Khan, W., , Mustaq, and Tabassum, (2014) 'OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY AND RISK ANALYSIS', International Journal of Science, Environment, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 1336 – 1346.

Mullins, (2010) The eight failures that caused the Gulf oil spill, [Online], Available: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19425-the-eight-failures-that-caused-the-gulf-oil-spill/ [17 March 2020].

Reader, , and Connor, , (2013) 'The Deepwater Horizon explosion: Non-technical skills, safety culture, and system complexity', Journal of Risk Research, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 405-424.

U.S Environmental Protection Agency (2020) Deepwater Horizon – BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, [Online], Available: https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/deepwater-horizon-bp-gulf-mexico-oil-spill [17 March 2020].

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Energy and Commerce. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (2013) The Role of BP in the Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, Second Session, June 17, 201, U.S. Government Printing Office.