I. Executive Summery
The evening of April 20, 2010 eleven lives were taken, and 17 others were injured. An exploration for crude oil, now remembered as one of our nation’s largest oil spills in history. A well control event allowed hydrocarbons to escape from the Macondo Well onto Transocean’s Deepwaster Horizon, resulting in explosions and fire on the rig. The fire, which was fed by hydrocarbons from the well continued to burn for 36 hours until the rig sank to bottom of the ocean. “Hydrocarbons continued to flow from the reservoir through the wellbore and the blowout preventer for 87 days, causing a spill of national significance” (Crisis Watch).
The operations were controlled by BP Exploration & Production Inc., in which they held the lease contract as operators of Mississippi Canyon Block 252, which contains the Macondo Well. Deepwater Horizon exploration was to collect crude oil, one of the leading fuels in the world. After the explosion that shocked the nation, BP formed an investigation team that was in charge of gathering the facts surrounding the accident, analyzing available information and to identify possible causes and making recommendations to enable prevention of similar accidents in the future.
The BP investigation Team began its work immediately in the aftermath of the accident, since gathering information directly from the explosion site was slightly out of the question immediately due to the horrendous events and lack of testimonies and vital facts, BP investigation team worked independently from other BP spill response activities and organizations collecting data directly from the rigs computer system which stores its information just like a plane with a black box. The concluding report presents an analysis of the events leading up the accident; eight key findings related to the accident were documented as key findings related to the