Bp Oil Spill Essay

In 2010, British Petroleum, also known as BP, became the center of attention of all media outlets due to the oil spill that scarred the Gulf of Mexico. According to the statement released by BP, an explosion took place at the Deepwater Horizon on the evening of April 20, 2010 which later caused the inevitable release of oil into the water for a span of 87 days. BP was forced to take responsibility for the oil spill since they had full ownership of the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the incident. The Deepwater Horizon was an oil platform used to drill wells underwater for the extraction and process of oil and natural gas. The Deepwater Horizon was located at near the coast of Louisiana, therefore, the nearby coastlines were affected as well

It took a lot of man labor and many scientists to find an effective way to stop the leak. Stopping the leak was not only hard but expensive too. BP was responsible to pay 300 million dollars to stop the leak but additionally they had to pay all cleanup costs (visualeconomics.com). BP had to pay a huge amount of money that isn’t easy to make in the first place. In 87 days, BP roughly makes 16 million dollars which is a very small percentage of what they had to pay for cleanup costs and to stop the leak. Another effect caused by the oil spill, were the contaminated coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The coastlines were filled of raw oil and dying sea animals and more than 30,000 people showed up to help clean up the beaches, collect oil, and help take care of animals (DoSomething.org). Since many beaches and sea animals were contaminated by the oil the tourism and fishing industry decrease a lot in sales. Many tourists weren’t willing to vacation near the spill and many seafood eaters weren’t willing to buy fish from the Gulf of Mexico. All of the states near the oil spill had a decrease in revenues since it’s obvious that tourism and seafood are their two main