Deepwater Horizon

It was a Tuesday evening and the Gulf was calm. I'd been on the Deepwater Horizon long enough that the constant roar of the rig felt like silence. We were close to done — men were already talking about going home.

20 April 2010 — 126 people aboard the Deepwater Horizon, ~41 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Earlier that evening we ran a negative pressure test — checking whether the cement plug sealing the well was holding. There was disagreement about the readings. Warning signs were explained away.

~5:00–8:00 p.m.: A negative pressure test was conducted; investigations later found its results were misinterpreted.

Around 9:40 I heard something change. Mud — the heavy fluid we pump down to control pressure — was coming back up when it shouldn't. On a rig, that's a kick: gas had found a path upward. We had minutes.

~9:40 p.m.: A 'kick' — uncontrolled influx of high-pressure methane gas surges up the wellbore.

Gas hit the surface and the air changed — a heavy hydrocarbon reek that shouldn't exist topside. Alarms sounding, engines overspeeding. A voice on the radio, almost calm: 'shut it in.' Then the first explosion came.

~9:49 p.m.: Methane gas ignites — the first explosion tears through the rig, 20 April 2010.

Eleven men died that night — some on the drill floor and in the engine rooms when the blasts hit. I didn't know that yet. I only knew to move, to reach my muster station, to account for my crew.

11 workers killed; 17 injured; 126 people were aboard the Deepwater Horizon that night.

We went over the side in lifeboats; the supply vessel Damon B. Bankston pulled survivors from the water. Watching the rig burn against the black sky, I counted the people around me — and tried not to count who wasn't there.

Survivors evacuated by lifeboat; the supply vessel Damon B. Bankston rescued crew from the water.

The Deepwater Horizon burned for thirty-six hours. On 22 April — Earth Day — she sank. The riser pipe broke open, and the Macondo well began flowing freely into the Gulf, a mile down, with nothing to stop it.

22 April 2010: The Deepwater Horizon sinks; the Macondo well begins gushing uncontrolled.

Oil gushed from the broken wellhead a mile down. Containment domes, top kills, junk shots — none worked at that depth. On the surface, miles of boom and skimmers chased the slick; dispersants were pumped straight into the well.

Weeks 1–12: containment attempts fail; dispersants are deployed; the slick spreads across the Gulf.

The oil reached the coast. Marshes that had known only grass and egrets turned black at the waterline. Pelicans came up coated in crude, the fisheries closed — and families who had fished here for generations could only wait.

Oil reaches Gulf Coast marshes, beaches, and wildlife; fisheries close across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

The well was capped on 15 July — 87 days after the blowout — and a relief well sealed it for good in September. By then some 4.9 million barrels had entered the Gulf: the largest marine oil spill in history.

15 July 2010: well capped after ~87 days; ~4.9 million barrels spilled — the largest marine oil spill in history.

I think about those eleven men. They were doing the same job I was. The failures ran back months — the well, the cement, the blowout preventer — not just that night. The men who never reached the lifeboats never came home.

11 workers killed: Jason Anderson, Aaron Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Gordon Jones, Roy Kemp, Karl Kleppinger Jr., Keith Manuel, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, Adam Weise.