BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: Crisis Management

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1.
The key facts and issues of the case are that British Petroleum's offshore drilling rig, The Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20,2010 and caused the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. The leaking oil well spilled 5 million barrels of oil into the sea killing eleven people working on the project, and injuring seventeen others severely. Offshore oil production was encouraged to develop US's own resources. Shallow well were now depleted and the oil companies moved to deeper waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon was a semi-submersible rig that was used to dig the well on the Mocondo slope of the Gulf of Mexico. Deepwater Horizon was a Korean built rig and arrived in Mexico in 2001. It was a multiuse facility. The Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was sunk 18,360 feet below sea level. It was leased by BP at the cost of $533,000 a day. An important device on a deep-well is the blowout preventer which is a 40-foot stack of valves that sit on the top of the well on the sea bed. It stops the flow of oil and gas from the well in the event of an emergency. Four weeks before the blowout, there was an incident involving the blowout preventer that could have compromised the BOP (1). The drill casing is cemented so that it prevents dangerous hydrocarbon gases from entering the shaft. The cementing process keeps the metal casing of the drill shaft completely centered in the bore. In addition, carbon steel liners are also used to correctly position the metal casing of the hole. The design of the well required 21 centralizers but only six were used for installation. Before moving Deepwater Horizon to its next job, a negative pressure test was conducted to ascertain if the well was sealed ...