The BP Oil Disaster

The huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southern coast of the US has been in the news all around the world.

The oil rig, which was drilling for oil under the sea on the south of the coast of state of Louisiana, exploded on Apr. 20th. 2010. Since then, around 500,000 litres of oil began to leak into the sea every day from the broken oil well, which is on a sea bed about 1,500m below where the rig used to be.  Eleven workers on the oil rig were killed in the explosion and the rig finally caught fire and sank to the bottom of the sea two days later.

An oil spill of this size is usually an environment disaster! The slicked oil already measures more than 5,000 squared km and some has already reached the Louisiana coast.  As this disaster progresses in two ways – one under the sea and one on the surface – it could cause very bad pollution along the coast and have serious consequences.  It has already  killed a huge number of sea creatures.

The company in charge of the rig is British Petroleum(BP).  President Obama of the US, said BP must stop the leak and pay for the clean up operation, although the US government will also give all the help it can.  To stop more oil from going into the sea, BP is trying to put a large metal container around the broken wall.  As it happened so far underwater, this has become a very difficult job.  Also it could take many weeks to stop the leak completely.  Some of the oil was destroyed by setting fire to it.

The accident has already had political consequences.  President Obama previously agreed that there should be more offshore oil wells, even though the risk of pollution was very big. Since the accident, he has now said there should be no new drilling, at least until there has been an investigation to find out exactly how the explosion happened.

Below is a video of a press conference held shortly after the spill started occuring.