Oil.

Blowout: The Deep Water Horizon Disaster. Dir. Scott Pelley. CBS News, 1 Oct. 2010. cbsnews.com. Web. 25 Jan. 2010.

This is a personal account of a survivor from the BP oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. This man details how after being saved by a boat, they went back toward the rig to save a life boat. Unknowingly, the life boat was still attached to the rig so when the boat driver tried to pull away they were stuck. Under BP's no knives policy, nobody on the raft had anything to cut the rope with. Finally, the captain of the rescue boat found a multitool and they were able to throw it to the life boat. The people on the life boat then cut the rope and were able to get to safety. BP's policies along with their oversight of safety almost cost he people on the raft their lives.

The Spill. ProPublica, 26 Oct. 2010. PBS.org. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

Frontline does an in depth look at the British Petroleum company and their questionable decisions regarding safety and the environment. BP has been a company that rose to great power and worth extremely quickly and easily outgrew their facilities and management. This is evidenced by lack of management and concern for safety in multiple instances. The first of these is in Alaska. BP cut corners by using under qualified inspectors and fewer inspectors to inspect their pipelines. This caused a vastly corroded pipeline to burst and spill thousands of gallons of oil into a nearby ditch. BP was lucky here because the burst occurred in the winter when cleanup was much easier. At the refinery in Texas City, numerous explosions and deaths occurred. These are blamed on overlooking extremely old equipment and not updating procedures. In the end, nobody truly accepted blame for the accidents and all family members were payed off to not speak of the event. Finally, the deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded killing people and injuring more. The culprit here was again a huge lack of updates and security checkpoints that were surpassed or ignored to save BP millions.


Wingfield, Brian. "Mississippi Oil Spill Highlights Risk of U.S. Oil Boom." Bloomberg News. 25 Feb. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2014. <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-25/mississippi-oil-spill-highlights-risk-of-u-s-oil-boom.html>.

An oil spill on the Mississippi in the past week caused an entire section of the river to be shut down for cleanup. This has delayed the shipment of many other goods that usually use the nations largest waterway to transport products. The coast guard has reported that they have cleaned up about 1000 of the 31000 gallons spilled in the river thus far. The spill may be a result of vastly heightened oil production and shipment within the United states in the past decade. Some say that the way to end spills like this is to finally put in the Keystone XL pipeline. Advocates say that this will create a faster and safer way to transport crude oil in the US, reducing the number of spills like this one.