(CURRENT EVENTS) offshore oil drilling platform located off the coast of
Louisiana and Mississippi. The platform was owned and operated by Transocean, LTD., under lease to British Petroleum (BP).
The well, which was in 1 mile of water, blew out (or ruptured) on 20 April 2010, and gushed millions of barrels of crude
oil into the Gulf of Mexico. On 14
July, the main rupture appeared to have been capped. By then, probably 4 million barrels of crude had been released into a sensitive habitat, destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of people.
According to some estimates, the Deepwater Horizon blowout was the worst peacetime oil well blowout in
history.
The Deepwater Horizon platform killed
eleven crew members when it exploded. The operator and its lessor, BP, had been cited hundreds of times for major
safety procedure violations.