WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. You know, I was 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:04.459 looking at the calendar just before we started 00:00:04.459 --> 00:00:07.500 rolling, and it is. It's just hard to believe 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:10.460 how much time has passed since April of 2010. 00:00:10.740 --> 00:00:13.279 It really is. For a lot of us, I think that spring 00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:17.019 and summer is just a blur of those orange news 00:00:17.019 --> 00:00:19.399 chyrons and that, you know, that grainy underwater 00:00:19.399 --> 00:00:22.379 video feed on a loop. The spill cam. Yeah, it 00:00:22.379 --> 00:00:25.059 was mesmerizing and horrifying all at once. Exactly. 00:00:25.179 --> 00:00:28.039 But today. We're not just, you know, reminiscing. 00:00:28.039 --> 00:00:30.100 We're going back to the Macondo Prospect. It's 00:00:30.100 --> 00:00:32.640 a place that really, before April 20th, 2010, 00:00:32.820 --> 00:00:35.719 was just a set of coordinates on a map. Mississippi 00:00:35.719 --> 00:00:38.799 Canyon Block 252, just another block in the Gulf. 00:00:39.060 --> 00:00:41.159 And I think to really understand what happened, 00:00:41.340 --> 00:00:44.200 we almost have to strip away that disaster movie 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:46.920 montage we all have in our heads and look at 00:00:46.920 --> 00:00:49.600 the machine itself. The Deepwater Horizon. This 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.240 wasn't just some bo -bobbing in the water. This 00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:54.299 was a semi -submersible drilling rig. It was 00:00:54.299 --> 00:00:56.520 a monster. It was a floating city, essentially. 00:00:56.619 --> 00:00:58.899 I mean, a massive dynamically positioned structure 00:00:58.899 --> 00:01:00.880 designed for the ultra deep water environment. 00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:04.079 OK, so when you say dynamically positioned, break 00:01:04.079 --> 00:01:05.900 that down. You mean it doesn't use anchors, right? 00:01:05.980 --> 00:01:08.219 Yeah. It's actively fighting the ocean to stay 00:01:08.219 --> 00:01:10.599 still. That's it. Exactly. It has these enormous 00:01:10.599 --> 00:01:13.099 thrusters, all computer controlled, that are 00:01:13.099 --> 00:01:15.260 constantly making micro adjustments against the 00:01:15.260 --> 00:01:18.079 wind, the waves, the current. all to keep the 00:01:18.079 --> 00:01:20.900 rig perfectly still over a single point on the 00:01:20.900 --> 00:01:23.180 seafloor, thousands of feet below. That's an 00:01:23.180 --> 00:01:25.260 incredible feat of engineering in itself. It's 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:28.439 unbelievable. And this rig, it was capable of 00:01:28.439 --> 00:01:31.579 operating in water up to 10 ,000 feet deep. On 00:01:31.579 --> 00:01:35.719 that day, it was drilling, well, 18 ,360 feet 00:01:35.719 --> 00:01:38.239 into the Earth's crust. It was really the pinnacle 00:01:38.239 --> 00:01:40.969 of offshore technology. And that's... That is 00:01:40.969 --> 00:01:43.269 what makes this story so unsettling, right? We're 00:01:43.269 --> 00:01:45.209 not talking about some rusty bucket from the 00:01:45.209 --> 00:01:47.549 1970s. This was supposed to be the best of the 00:01:47.549 --> 00:01:50.969 best. Absolutely. And yet, on April 20th, 41 00:01:50.969 --> 00:01:53.609 miles off the Louisiana coast, it became the 00:01:53.609 --> 00:01:56.150 site of the largest marine oil spill in the history 00:01:56.150 --> 00:01:58.609 of the petroleum industry. It just completely 00:01:58.609 --> 00:02:01.129 eclipsed everything that came before it. To give 00:02:01.129 --> 00:02:03.900 you some sense of scale, the... Previous record 00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:05.700 holder in the Gulf, that was the Oxtockeye spill 00:02:05.700 --> 00:02:08.580 back in 79. The Deepwater Horizon event, the 00:02:08.580 --> 00:02:10.719 final estimates put it at anywhere from 8 to 00:02:10.719 --> 00:02:13.280 31 percent larger than even that massive spill. 00:02:13.500 --> 00:02:16.340 So our mission today is pretty specific. We've 00:02:16.340 --> 00:02:18.280 all seen the photos, you know, the oil slick 00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:20.860 pelicans. We know it was bad, but we want to 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:24.280 look at the how. How? Does a billion -dollar 00:02:24.280 --> 00:02:27.740 rig like this fail so catastrophically? What 00:02:27.740 --> 00:02:30.259 were the mechanics behind it? Yes, the engineering 00:02:30.259 --> 00:02:32.759 mechanics of the explosion. And then in the aftermath, 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:36.879 we need to unpack the experimental and, frankly, 00:02:36.960 --> 00:02:39.180 really controversial methods they used to try 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:41.159 and stop it. Because when you look at the source 00:02:41.159 --> 00:02:42.939 material, it truly feels like they were just... 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:45.400 making it up as they went along. In many ways, 00:02:45.400 --> 00:02:47.460 they were. They had to. They were rewriting the 00:02:47.460 --> 00:02:50.840 rulebook for deep sea salvage and disaster response 00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:53.840 in real time, all under the glare of the entire 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:56.060 world's media. But before we even get to the 00:02:56.060 --> 00:02:57.460 response, we have to start with the catalyst. 00:02:57.639 --> 00:03:00.780 Yeah. The blowout itself. Right. Because rigs 00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:02.780 don't just explode for no reason. There's a sequence 00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:06.319 of events here. And tragically, like we have 00:03:06.319 --> 00:03:08.319 to acknowledge, it starts with the human cost. 00:03:08.479 --> 00:03:11.639 It does. We can't. We can't just gloss over that. 00:03:11.699 --> 00:03:14.280 On the night of the explosion, there were 126 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:17.060 people on board that rig. Wow. When that gas 00:03:17.060 --> 00:03:19.580 ignited, 11 workers were killed. They were never 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:22.300 found. Another 17 were critically injured. So 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:25.379 you have 94 people who were rescued. But the 00:03:25.379 --> 00:03:27.319 trauma of that night, I mean, can you imagine 00:03:27.319 --> 00:03:30.139 jumping from a burning rig into a pitch black 00:03:30.139 --> 00:03:33.099 ocean that's also covered in burning oil? It's 00:03:33.099 --> 00:03:35.939 imaginable. Just a horrific choice to have to 00:03:35.939 --> 00:03:38.259 make. And the rig itself, it didn't sink right 00:03:38.259 --> 00:03:41.759 away. It fought for two days. It burned for almost 00:03:41.759 --> 00:03:44.159 two full days before it finally succumbed and 00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:47.439 sang on April 22nd. And that that is the moment 00:03:47.439 --> 00:03:49.120 the narrative really shifted. It went from a 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:51.599 search and rescue mission to a full blown ecological 00:03:51.599 --> 00:03:54.099 catastrophe. So let's get into the physics of 00:03:54.099 --> 00:03:56.539 it. Walk us through the blowout. What is actually 00:03:56.539 --> 00:03:58.979 happening, you know, miles under the surface 00:03:58.979 --> 00:04:01.280 in the dark? OK, so it's really a battle of pressures 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:04.060 deep down in that oil reservoir. You have oil 00:04:04.060 --> 00:04:06.080 and natural gas that are trapped under immense 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:08.460 geological pressure, just enormous. The whole 00:04:08.460 --> 00:04:10.889 drilling. operation is designed to manage that 00:04:10.889 --> 00:04:14.330 pressure. They pump a heavy fluid basically engineered 00:04:14.330 --> 00:04:17.410 mud down the drill pipe and the weight of that 00:04:17.410 --> 00:04:19.870 mud is supposed to act as a counterweight. It 00:04:19.870 --> 00:04:22.009 pushes down to keep the oil and gas from coming 00:04:22.009 --> 00:04:23.829 up. It's like it's like putting a really heavy 00:04:23.829 --> 00:04:25.750 lid on a boiling pot. That's a perfect analogy 00:04:25.750 --> 00:04:29.329 precisely. But on April 20th that balance was 00:04:29.329 --> 00:04:33.279 lost. A surge of high -pressure methane gas escaped 00:04:33.279 --> 00:04:36.759 the reservoir. It found a pathway, probably through 00:04:36.759 --> 00:04:39.120 faulty cement work we'll get into later, and 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:41.959 it shot up the wellbore. And here's the critical 00:04:41.959 --> 00:04:44.990 physics lesson. As that gas bubble rises, the 00:04:44.990 --> 00:04:47.870 pressure of the ocean above it decreases. And 00:04:47.870 --> 00:04:50.129 thanks to Boyle's law, as pressure goes down, 00:04:50.230 --> 00:04:53.170 volume goes way, way up. So this bubble of methane 00:04:53.170 --> 00:04:55.509 is getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster 00:04:55.509 --> 00:04:57.910 the higher it gets. Exponentially bigger. It 00:04:57.910 --> 00:05:00.209 expanded into the marine riser. That's the main 00:05:00.209 --> 00:05:02.670 pipe connecting the seabed to the rig. It shot 00:05:02.670 --> 00:05:05.149 up to the surface like a cannonball. It engulfed 00:05:05.149 --> 00:05:08.069 the entire rig floor in flammable gas, found 00:05:08.069 --> 00:05:10.129 an ignition source, most likely the engine room, 00:05:10.230 --> 00:05:12.819 and it detonated. Just a catastrophe. instantaneous 00:05:12.819 --> 00:05:15.720 explosion. A series of them, really. Okay, so 00:05:15.720 --> 00:05:18.079 the rig is gone. It's sunk. We're now looking 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:20.740 at April 22nd. There's just an empty patch of 00:05:20.740 --> 00:05:23.379 ocean where this massive rig used to be. And 00:05:23.379 --> 00:05:26.060 this. This is where the story gets incredibly 00:05:26.060 --> 00:05:28.560 murky. Did they know right away that the well 00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:31.319 was just wide open at the bottom of the sea? 00:05:31.459 --> 00:05:34.839 Publicly, no. Initially, the hope, or maybe the 00:05:34.839 --> 00:05:37.620 corporate spin, was that the well had sealed 00:05:37.620 --> 00:05:40.000 itself during the collapse or that the amount 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:42.839 leaking was just residual oil from the riser 00:05:42.839 --> 00:05:45.339 pipe. Wishful thinking. Very wishful thinking. 00:05:46.029 --> 00:05:48.449 The leak wasn't formally discovered and announced 00:05:48.449 --> 00:05:50.850 until the afternoon of April 22nd, once they 00:05:50.850 --> 00:05:53.389 got ROVs down there and could see it. But once 00:05:53.389 --> 00:05:56.129 they saw that slick spreading on the fists, the 00:05:56.129 --> 00:05:58.850 numbers game began. And this is truly one of 00:05:58.850 --> 00:06:00.910 the most contentious parts of this whole deep 00:06:00.910 --> 00:06:03.529 dive. The flow rate controversy. I remember this 00:06:03.529 --> 00:06:05.829 so vividly. You'd turn on the news and BP would 00:06:05.829 --> 00:06:08.110 say one number. And then, you know, some scientists 00:06:08.110 --> 00:06:09.910 from a university would come on and say something 00:06:09.910 --> 00:06:13.480 10 times higher. It was confusing. It was a masterclass 00:06:13.480 --> 00:06:16.680 in obfuscation, is what it was. BP's initial 00:06:16.680 --> 00:06:19.560 public estimate for the flow rate was 1 ,000 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:22.959 to 5 ,000 barrels per day. 5 ,000 barrels. OK, 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:25.220 that sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But the 00:06:25.220 --> 00:06:27.860 government assembled its own team. the Flow Rate 00:06:27.860 --> 00:06:30.879 Technical Group, the FRTG. They weren't relying 00:06:30.879 --> 00:06:33.699 on BP's data. They were looking at satellite 00:06:33.699 --> 00:06:36.579 imagery, the physics of the plume from the video, 00:06:36.819 --> 00:06:39.819 the surface area of the slick. The actual evidence. 00:06:40.019 --> 00:06:42.040 The independent evidence. Their initial estimate, 00:06:42.220 --> 00:06:46.879 62 ,000 barrels per day. Wait, so... 5 ,000 versus 00:06:46.879 --> 00:06:49.740 62 ,000. That's not a margin of error. That's 00:06:49.740 --> 00:06:51.399 a completely different reality. It's a completely 00:06:51.399 --> 00:06:54.000 different disaster. And it matters so much because 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.160 of the logistics of the response. I mean, if 00:06:56.160 --> 00:06:57.899 you tell the Coast Guard you're fighting a 5 00:06:57.899 --> 00:07:00.959 ,000 barrel a day fire, they bring a garden hose. 00:07:01.139 --> 00:07:03.339 Right. If you tell them it's 62 ,000 barrels 00:07:03.339 --> 00:07:05.339 a day, they bring the entire fire department 00:07:05.339 --> 00:07:07.980 from three states. The scale of the response 00:07:07.980 --> 00:07:10.279 is dictated by that number. So the big question 00:07:10.279 --> 00:07:13.860 is, did BP know? Did they have their own data? 00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:17.220 that suggested the higher number while publicly 00:07:17.220 --> 00:07:19.199 saying the lower one. And that's the smoking 00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:22.279 gun. Years later, in 2013, during the litigation, 00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:25.220 internal emails finally came to light. And they 00:07:25.220 --> 00:07:28.860 showed that BP's own engineers had internal models 00:07:28.860 --> 00:07:30.839 and calculations that matched the government's 00:07:30.839 --> 00:07:33.199 higher estimates almost perfectly. They were 00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:35.160 sharing these worst -case scenarios with their 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:38.720 supervisors, but publicly. The company line held 00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:41.319 at 5 ,000 for a very, very long time. That is 00:07:41.319 --> 00:07:44.699 just maddening to hear. So in the end, after 00:07:44.699 --> 00:07:47.399 all the analysis, how much oil are we actually 00:07:47.399 --> 00:07:49.689 talking about? What was the final tally? The 00:07:49.689 --> 00:07:52.350 final, court -agreed -upon number is approximately 00:07:52.350 --> 00:07:55.750 4 .9 million barrels of oil. I have a hard time 00:07:55.750 --> 00:07:57.610 visualizing barrels. Can you put that in other 00:07:57.610 --> 00:08:00.829 terms? Sure. Think of it as 210 million U .S. 00:08:00.829 --> 00:08:03.310 gallons. Or, maybe better, think about the geography. 00:08:03.709 --> 00:08:06.529 The slick, at its largest extent, covered 70 00:08:06.529 --> 00:08:09.029 ,000 square miles of ocean. 70 ,000. That is 00:08:09.029 --> 00:08:11.089 roughly the size of the entire state of Oklahoma. 00:08:11.430 --> 00:08:13.910 Just imagine the whole state of Oklahoma paved 00:08:13.910 --> 00:08:16.029 in a layer of crude oil. And it wasn't static. 00:08:16.290 --> 00:08:18.649 That slick was moving. It was a tide of oil. 00:08:18.769 --> 00:08:21.089 It was. It hit the marshes of Louisiana first, 00:08:21.170 --> 00:08:23.550 then Mississippi, Alabama, the white sand beaches 00:08:23.550 --> 00:08:26.209 of Florida. Eventually, weathered tar balls were 00:08:26.209 --> 00:08:28.790 washing up as far west as Texas. It became a 00:08:28.790 --> 00:08:31.990 truly transnational disaster. So we have this 00:08:31.990 --> 00:08:34.590 open wound in the planet, 5 ,000 feet down. It's 00:08:34.590 --> 00:08:37.929 bleeding oil. And now we enter the phase that, 00:08:38.009 --> 00:08:39.629 for me, was the most fascinating part of the 00:08:39.629 --> 00:08:42.210 research, the man versus pressure phase. This 00:08:42.210 --> 00:08:46.679 was 87 straight days of just... engineering trial 00:08:46.679 --> 00:08:48.700 and error on live television. Trial and error 00:08:48.700 --> 00:08:51.879 is a very polite way to put it. It was desperation. 00:08:52.120 --> 00:08:53.960 You have to remember the environment they were 00:08:53.960 --> 00:08:56.840 working in. It's 5 ,000 feet down. The pressure 00:08:56.840 --> 00:09:00.820 is over 2 ,200 PSI. It is pitch black. The water 00:09:00.820 --> 00:09:03.139 temperature is near freezing. You can't send 00:09:03.139 --> 00:09:05.120 a human diver down there. They would be crushed 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:07.440 into jelly instantly. So this is a robot war. 00:09:07.789 --> 00:09:10.129 It's exclusively a robot war. It was all done 00:09:10.129 --> 00:09:13.009 via ROVs, remotely operated vehicles, little 00:09:13.009 --> 00:09:15.429 underwater drones with cameras and manipulator 00:09:15.429 --> 00:09:18.070 arms. And I think people assume, oh, it's a robot. 00:09:18.149 --> 00:09:21.029 It's precise. Yeah. But piloting an ROV at that 00:09:21.029 --> 00:09:23.610 depth, trying to turn a valve with a hydraulic 00:09:23.610 --> 00:09:26.110 arm while you're fighting deep sea currents and 00:09:26.110 --> 00:09:28.429 looking through a muddy camera feed from a boat 00:09:28.429 --> 00:09:31.269 that's pitching and rolling on the surface. It's 00:09:31.269 --> 00:09:33.070 like trying to thread a needle while you're wearing 00:09:33.070 --> 00:09:36.049 boxing gloves in the dark during an earthquake. 00:09:36.110 --> 00:09:39.350 It is. unbelievably difficult okay so attempt 00:09:39.350 --> 00:09:43.129 number one what was plan a plan a was to use 00:09:43.129 --> 00:09:44.789 the thing that was supposed to have prevented 00:09:44.789 --> 00:09:48.070 the accident in the first place the blowout preventer 00:09:48.590 --> 00:09:51.370 The BOP. Right, the big stack of valves on the 00:09:51.370 --> 00:09:55.149 seafloor. It's this 50 -foot -tall, 450 -ton 00:09:55.149 --> 00:09:58.730 stack of valves. The ROVs went down and tried 00:09:58.730 --> 00:10:01.750 to manually trigger the blind shear rams. These 00:10:01.750 --> 00:10:03.970 are basically a set of giant hydraulic scissors 00:10:03.970 --> 00:10:06.330 designed to slice through the drill pipe and 00:10:06.330 --> 00:10:08.889 crimp it shut, sealing the well. But the pipe 00:10:08.889 --> 00:10:10.710 was already bent from the explosion, wasn't it? 00:10:10.789 --> 00:10:13.250 That was the problem. The force of the explosion 00:10:13.250 --> 00:10:15.629 and the sinking of the rig had bent and buckled 00:10:15.629 --> 00:10:18.960 the pipe inside the BOP. couldn't get a clean 00:10:18.960 --> 00:10:21.799 cut. On top of that, investigations later found 00:10:21.799 --> 00:10:24.019 there was a hydraulic leak in the system and 00:10:24.019 --> 00:10:26.740 a dead battery in one of the control pods. The 00:10:26.740 --> 00:10:29.519 ROVs pushed and pulled and tried hot stabbing 00:10:29.519 --> 00:10:32.139 it with hydraulic fluid, but the BOP was a brick. 00:10:32.220 --> 00:10:34.100 It wasn't going to close. So plan A is a total 00:10:34.100 --> 00:10:37.980 bust. On to plan B, the containment dome. Now 00:10:37.980 --> 00:10:39.519 this one sounded like a pretty good idea on paper. 00:10:39.980 --> 00:10:42.100 It's a classic engineering solution, right? If 00:10:42.100 --> 00:10:44.179 you have a leak, you put a bucket over it. They 00:10:44.179 --> 00:10:47.980 built this massive 125 -ton steel and concrete 00:10:47.980 --> 00:10:51.379 coffer dam. The plan was to lower it over the 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:54.340 main leak, collect the oil, and then funnel it 00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:57.259 up a pipe to a ship on the surface. Simple. But 00:10:57.259 --> 00:10:59.269 they forgot about the... The chemistry of the 00:10:59.269 --> 00:11:01.389 deep ocean. They completely underestimated the 00:11:01.389 --> 00:11:04.330 problem of methane hydrates. This is a fascinating 00:11:04.330 --> 00:11:07.070 and in this case destructive chemical reaction. 00:11:07.250 --> 00:11:10.070 OK. When you have high pressure methane gas mixing 00:11:10.070 --> 00:11:12.710 with very cold water under immense pressure, 00:11:12.850 --> 00:11:16.470 it doesn't just bubble. It crystallizes. It forms 00:11:16.470 --> 00:11:19.049 a kind of slushy, flammable ice. It turns into 00:11:19.049 --> 00:11:22.830 ice, like solid. Basically, yes. Flammable ice 00:11:22.830 --> 00:11:25.230 is what the Roughnecks call it. And these hydrate 00:11:25.230 --> 00:11:27.629 crystals formed almost instantly inside the dome 00:11:27.629 --> 00:11:29.429 as soon as it was lowered over the leak. They 00:11:29.429 --> 00:11:31.549 looked like champagne bubbles freezing in midair, 00:11:31.690 --> 00:11:33.870 and they clogged the opening at the top of the 00:11:33.870 --> 00:11:35.789 dome. So the funnel just gets completely plugged 00:11:35.789 --> 00:11:38.990 with this methane ice. Even worse, the crystals 00:11:38.990 --> 00:11:41.129 are actually buoyant. They have a lower density 00:11:41.129 --> 00:11:45.070 than water. So they made the whole 125 -ton dome 00:11:45.070 --> 00:11:47.830 start to get light. It started to lift off the 00:11:47.830 --> 00:11:50.289 seafloor and became unstable. They had to scrap 00:11:50.289 --> 00:11:52.429 the entire project. and lift it back up. It was 00:11:52.429 --> 00:11:55.850 this massive televised failure caused by the 00:11:55.850 --> 00:11:58.570 fundamental laws of thermodynamics. I can't imagine 00:11:58.570 --> 00:12:01.350 the mood in the control room watching this giant 00:12:01.350 --> 00:12:05.350 dome just float away because of ice. They have 00:12:05.350 --> 00:12:08.509 to move on. Plan C, top kill. Top kill. Now, 00:12:08.549 --> 00:12:11.230 this is a brute force attack. The theory is if 00:12:11.230 --> 00:12:12.870 the well is pushing up with a certain amount 00:12:12.870 --> 00:12:14.990 of pressure, we'll just push down harder from 00:12:14.990 --> 00:12:16.990 the top. Right. They hooked up these massive 00:12:16.990 --> 00:12:19.909 pumps on ships at the surface and tried to fire 00:12:19.909 --> 00:12:22.509 thousands of barrels of heavy drilling mud directly 00:12:22.509 --> 00:12:24.950 into the blowout preventer, hoping to overcome 00:12:24.950 --> 00:12:26.970 the pressure of the oil and choke it off. It 00:12:26.970 --> 00:12:28.669 sounds like trying to shove the genie back into 00:12:28.669 --> 00:12:30.509 the bottle. And the genie was just too strong. 00:12:30.570 --> 00:12:32.629 They pumped and pumped for three days straight. 00:12:32.710 --> 00:12:35.919 But the flow rate, remember that. 62 ,000 barrels 00:12:35.919 --> 00:12:37.879 a day number they didn't want to admit to was 00:12:37.879 --> 00:12:40.500 just too high. The well spit the mud right back 00:12:40.500 --> 00:12:44.480 out. It wouldn't take it. And then we get to 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:47.620 my personal favorite, the junk shot. I honestly 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:49.340 thought this was a joke when I first read about 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:51.399 it years ago. It sounds like a joke, doesn't 00:12:51.399 --> 00:12:54.139 it? But the junk shot is exactly what it sounds 00:12:54.139 --> 00:12:57.120 like. They gathered up literal debris pieces 00:12:57.120 --> 00:13:01.370 of shredded tire, knotted rope. Golf balls. Golf 00:13:01.370 --> 00:13:03.529 balls. I'm stuck on the golf balls. Who's the 00:13:03.529 --> 00:13:06.190 person who decides, you know what we need? Golf 00:13:06.190 --> 00:13:09.409 balls. Yeah. It's about density and shape and 00:13:09.409 --> 00:13:11.870 creating what they call a bridging effect. The 00:13:11.870 --> 00:13:14.210 idea is you pump this solid material into the 00:13:14.210 --> 00:13:16.850 BOP to clog up all the nooks and crannies, creating 00:13:16.850 --> 00:13:19.129 enough friction and blockage for the mud from 00:13:19.129 --> 00:13:21.409 the top kill to finally take hold and plug the 00:13:21.409 --> 00:13:24.299 thing up. It just feels so incredibly low tech 00:13:24.299 --> 00:13:26.519 for such a high tech industry. Hey, throw some 00:13:26.519 --> 00:13:28.820 tires in there. It really speaks to the absolute 00:13:28.820 --> 00:13:31.559 lack of contingency planning for a deep water 00:13:31.559 --> 00:13:33.940 blowout. They had all this incredible technology 00:13:33.940 --> 00:13:36.299 to drill the hole, but almost no proven technology 00:13:36.299 --> 00:13:39.480 to fix it if it broke this badly. And as you 00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:41.580 can probably guess, the junk shot also failed. 00:13:41.679 --> 00:13:43.480 The pressure from the well just blew it all right 00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:45.519 back out. So we're months into this now. The 00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:48.740 oil is still flowing. What finally worked? What 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:50.429 was the thing that stopped it? Well, they had 00:13:50.429 --> 00:13:52.750 some partial wins along the way. They managed 00:13:52.750 --> 00:13:55.730 to get a smaller cap, a top hat cap on there 00:13:55.730 --> 00:13:57.809 that was able to siphon some of the oil to the 00:13:57.809 --> 00:14:01.429 surface. But the final kill, the actual end of 00:14:01.429 --> 00:14:05.230 the disaster, required two things. The static 00:14:05.230 --> 00:14:08.450 kill from the top and the relief wells from the 00:14:08.450 --> 00:14:11.830 side. Explain the relief wells. This always seemed 00:14:11.830 --> 00:14:14.570 like the sniper shot of drilling to me. It really 00:14:14.570 --> 00:14:16.830 is. While all this chaos was happening with the 00:14:16.830 --> 00:14:19.629 domes and the jump shots, two other drilling 00:14:19.629 --> 00:14:22.370 rigs, the Development Driller III and the GSF 00:14:22.370 --> 00:14:25.490 Development Driller II, were quietly, methodically 00:14:25.490 --> 00:14:28.470 drilling brand new holes nearby. Okay. Their 00:14:28.470 --> 00:14:31.250 goal was to drill down 18 ,000 feet through solid 00:14:31.250 --> 00:14:33.870 rock and then steer the drill bit to intersect 00:14:33.870 --> 00:14:36.750 the original wellbore at the very bottom, a pipe 00:14:36.750 --> 00:14:38.710 that's only about seven inches wide. That's like 00:14:38.710 --> 00:14:40.250 trying to hit a dinner plate from three and a 00:14:40.250 --> 00:14:42.860 half miles away through rock. It is an incredible 00:14:42.860 --> 00:14:45.720 feat of precision drilling. And they did it. 00:14:45.779 --> 00:14:47.799 Once they intercepted the well from the side, 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:50.279 they could pump heavy mud and then cement in 00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:52.279 from the bottom, which is a much more effective 00:14:52.279 --> 00:14:56.000 way to seal it. On September 19, 2010, a full 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:58.799 five months after the explosion, the well was 00:14:58.799 --> 00:15:01.960 officially declared effectively dead. Five months. 00:15:02.299 --> 00:15:04.679 That is just an eternity when you are dumping 00:15:04.679 --> 00:15:07.419 that amount of toxic sludge into an ecosystem 00:15:07.419 --> 00:15:09.899 every single day. And that brings us to the surface. 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:13.000 While the engineers are playing robot wars underwater, 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:15.799 there is this massive mobilization happening 00:15:15.799 --> 00:15:18.419 on the waves. The cleanup. This was the other 00:15:18.419 --> 00:15:20.220 half of the battle. And it really followed a 00:15:20.220 --> 00:15:22.480 three -pronged strategy. Containment removal 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:25.419 and dispersal. Let's talk about containment first. 00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:28.519 The booms. We all saw miles and miles of these 00:15:28.519 --> 00:15:30.899 orange and yellow sausages floating in the water. 00:15:31.159 --> 00:15:34.080 4 .2 million feet of boom was deployed. It looks 00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:36.259 incredibly impressive on camera. It sends a message 00:15:36.259 --> 00:15:38.039 to the public, look, we're doing something. We 00:15:38.039 --> 00:15:41.080 are fencing it in. But scientifically, in the 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:43.220 open ocean, it was largely theater. Why do you 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:45.580 say that? Why didn't it work? Because the ocean 00:15:45.580 --> 00:15:48.799 moves. Booms are pretty effective in a calm harbor 00:15:48.799 --> 00:15:51.679 or a quiet lake. But out in the open gulf... 00:15:51.929 --> 00:15:54.309 With three foot waves, with wind, with strong 00:15:54.309 --> 00:15:57.190 currents, the oil just sloshes right over the 00:15:57.190 --> 00:15:59.370 top or it gets pushed down and goes right underneath 00:15:59.370 --> 00:16:02.049 it. I vividly remember seeing news footage of 00:16:02.049 --> 00:16:04.389 oil washing up on the beach with the boom tangled 00:16:04.389 --> 00:16:06.850 up right there in it. Exactly. It became part 00:16:06.850 --> 00:16:08.990 of the debris field. It was a visual barrier, 00:16:09.169 --> 00:16:11.789 not a truly effective physical one in most conditions. 00:16:12.190 --> 00:16:15.509 And the desperation to contain it led to some 00:16:15.509 --> 00:16:17.409 pretty weird moments. You remember the hair? 00:16:17.570 --> 00:16:19.629 The Matter of Trust campaign? Yes. People were 00:16:19.629 --> 00:16:21.850 sending in their hair clippings. Yeah, and dog 00:16:21.850 --> 00:16:25.269 fur. Yes. Salons all across the country were 00:16:25.269 --> 00:16:27.409 sweeping up hair from their floors and mailing 00:16:27.409 --> 00:16:30.649 it to the Gulf. The idea, which actually dates 00:16:30.649 --> 00:16:33.470 back to the Exxon Valdez bill, is that hair absorbs 00:16:33.470 --> 00:16:35.870 oil very well. The oils stick to the cuticles. 00:16:35.909 --> 00:16:38.669 So people were stuffing pantyhose with dog fur 00:16:38.669 --> 00:16:41.190 and human hair to make these little homemade 00:16:41.190 --> 00:16:44.230 absorbent booms. Did it work at all? I mean, 00:16:44.230 --> 00:16:46.830 on a micro scale, sure, a ball of hair will soak 00:16:46.830 --> 00:16:49.289 up motor oil in your driveway. But on the scale 00:16:49.289 --> 00:16:53.450 of 4 .9... million barrels. It was. It was a 00:16:53.450 --> 00:16:56.830 symbolic gesture, but it really showed how desperate 00:16:56.830 --> 00:16:59.529 and helpless the public felt and how much they 00:16:59.529 --> 00:17:01.269 wanted to do something. But while the public 00:17:01.269 --> 00:17:04.210 was knitting these hair booms, BP was deploying 00:17:04.210 --> 00:17:07.190 the big guns. The chemical dispersants. Corrects 00:17:07.190 --> 00:17:10.359 it. And this is, without a doubt, the most controversial 00:17:10.359 --> 00:17:12.960 and potentially damaging legacy of the entire 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:17.720 cleanup effort. BP used 1 .84 million gallons 00:17:17.720 --> 00:17:20.039 of a dispersant called Corexit. That volume alone 00:17:20.039 --> 00:17:22.779 is staggering. 1 .84 million gallons of an industrial 00:17:22.779 --> 00:17:25.319 chemical. It is. And crucially, they used it 00:17:25.319 --> 00:17:27.140 in a way that had never been done before on this 00:17:27.140 --> 00:17:29.980 scale. Typically, you spray dispersant on the 00:17:29.980 --> 00:17:32.380 surface slick. You have these big C -130 planes 00:17:32.380 --> 00:17:34.700 that fly over and basically crop dots the oil. 00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:37.349 The chemical breaks the surface tension. shatters 00:17:37.349 --> 00:17:39.490 into tiny droplets and then it sinks below the 00:17:39.490 --> 00:17:41.609 surface. Out of sight, out of mind. Pretty much, 00:17:41.789 --> 00:17:44.490 that's the idea. But for Deepwater Horizon, they 00:17:44.490 --> 00:17:46.490 got special permission from the EPA to inject 00:17:46.490 --> 00:17:49.240 the dispersant subsea. At the source. Directly 00:17:49.240 --> 00:17:53.519 at the source. They pumped 771 ,000 gallons of 00:17:53.519 --> 00:17:56.079 core exit directly into the gushing wellhead 00:17:56.079 --> 00:17:58.160 at the bottom of the ocean. Okay, what was the 00:17:58.160 --> 00:18:00.059 logic there? Why do it down there? The logic 00:18:00.059 --> 00:18:02.920 was to emulsify the oil before it ever had a 00:18:02.920 --> 00:18:05.400 chance to reach the surface. They wanted to prevent 00:18:05.400 --> 00:18:08.500 those massive miles -wide slicks from ever forming 00:18:08.500 --> 00:18:11.059 in the first place. The hope was that by breaking 00:18:11.059 --> 00:18:14.200 it into microscopic droplets at the source, naturally 00:18:14.200 --> 00:18:16.180 occurring bacteria would be able to eat it much 00:18:16.180 --> 00:18:18.430 faster. You're adding a known toxic... chemical 00:18:18.430 --> 00:18:22.230 directly to a known toxic substance. And that 00:18:22.230 --> 00:18:24.609 is the heart of the controversy, because Corexit 00:18:24.609 --> 00:18:27.329 acts as a delivery system for the oil's most 00:18:27.329 --> 00:18:30.369 toxic components. It makes it bioavailable. It 00:18:30.369 --> 00:18:32.549 makes it easier for the oil to enter the cells 00:18:32.549 --> 00:18:35.509 of living organisms. A 2012 study from Georgia 00:18:35.509 --> 00:18:37.589 Tech found that the mixture of oil and Corexit 00:18:37.589 --> 00:18:40.589 was up to 52 times more toxic to the Gulf's ecosystems 00:18:40.589 --> 00:18:43.329 than the oil by itself. 52 times more toxic. 00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:47.339 Yes. And a specific formulation they used, Corexit 00:18:47.339 --> 00:18:51.680 9527A, contains a chemical called 2 -betoxyethanol. 00:18:51.819 --> 00:18:54.440 This is a solvent that's been linked to hemolysis, 00:18:54.619 --> 00:18:57.299 the rupturing of red blood cells in both animals 00:18:57.299 --> 00:19:00.900 and humans. The EPA was so concerned about this, 00:19:00.940 --> 00:19:02.880 they actually ordered BP to stop using it and 00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:05.519 find a less toxic alternative. And what did BP 00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:08.279 say to that? They essentially said no. They came 00:19:08.279 --> 00:19:10.460 back and claimed that no other product was as 00:19:10.460 --> 00:19:12.779 effective or available in the massive quantities 00:19:12.779 --> 00:19:15.460 they needed. They argued that the known environmental 00:19:15.460 --> 00:19:17.859 damage of thick oil hitting the fragile coastal 00:19:17.859 --> 00:19:20.900 marshes was a greater evil than the unknown chemical 00:19:20.900 --> 00:19:23.200 damage of the dispersant in the deep ocean. It 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:25.539 was. It was a choice between two poisons. And 00:19:25.539 --> 00:19:27.819 this subsea injection, it created a phenomenon 00:19:27.819 --> 00:19:30.259 we really hadn't seen before, right? These invisible 00:19:30.259 --> 00:19:33.279 plumes. This is fascinating and absolutely terrifying 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:35.660 because so much of the oil was dispersed at depth. 00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:38.259 A huge percentage of it never floated to the 00:19:38.259 --> 00:19:40.240 surface. It just hung there, suspended in the 00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:43.019 water column. Scientists in submersibles found 00:19:43.019 --> 00:19:45.059 these massive underwater prunes of dissolved 00:19:45.059 --> 00:19:47.819 oil. One of them was measured at 22 miles long. 00:19:48.019 --> 00:19:51.660 A ghost river of oil just moving silently through 00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:53.680 the deep ocean. That's exactly what it was. And 00:19:53.680 --> 00:19:55.539 because it wasn't on the surface, you couldn't 00:19:55.539 --> 00:19:57.180 skim it. You couldn't burn it. You couldn't even 00:19:57.180 --> 00:19:59.799 really track it effectively. It was just soaking 00:19:59.799 --> 00:20:02.940 the entire deep sea ecosystem in a toxic chemical 00:20:02.940 --> 00:20:05.700 bath. We mentioned burning. They did manage to 00:20:05.700 --> 00:20:07.799 burn some of it, the stuff on the surface. They 00:20:07.799 --> 00:20:11.259 did. They conducted 411 controlled in situ burns. 00:20:11.539 --> 00:20:14.279 They would corral the thickest parts of the slick 00:20:14.279 --> 00:20:16.599 with special fireproof booms and then light it 00:20:16.599 --> 00:20:19.319 on fire. It's dramatic, but it was actually one 00:20:19.319 --> 00:20:21.700 of the more effective methods. It removed an 00:20:21.700 --> 00:20:25.420 estimated 265 ,000 barrels. Okay. And what about 00:20:25.420 --> 00:20:27.640 skimming? The boats that, you know, suck the 00:20:27.640 --> 00:20:30.319 oil off the surface? Skimming is incredibly inefficient 00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:32.799 in the open ocean. It makes for great news footage. 00:20:32.859 --> 00:20:34.980 You see the boats working. But they only recovered 00:20:34.980 --> 00:20:38.319 about 3 % of the total spilled oil through skimming 00:20:38.319 --> 00:20:42.299 operations. Only 3%. So the vast majority of 00:20:42.299 --> 00:20:45.339 that 4 .9 million barrels either evaporated, 00:20:45.339 --> 00:20:47.380 was dispersed into the water column, burned, 00:20:47.539 --> 00:20:51.130 or it's still down there. Correct. And that leads 00:20:51.130 --> 00:20:53.650 us directly into the environmental fallout because 00:20:53.650 --> 00:20:56.490 you simply cannot dump that volume of toxic material 00:20:56.490 --> 00:20:59.130 into a semi -enclosed body of water like the 00:20:59.130 --> 00:21:02.410 Gulf of Mexico without profound and lasting consequences. 00:21:02.769 --> 00:21:05.190 Let's dig into the biology of that because I 00:21:05.190 --> 00:21:06.650 think there's a tendency for people to assume, 00:21:06.730 --> 00:21:09.650 OK, a few birds died, some dolphins, but nature 00:21:09.650 --> 00:21:13.170 is resilient. It heals. The data from the years 00:21:13.170 --> 00:21:15.410 since suggests something much more systemic happened. 00:21:15.660 --> 00:21:18.599 Oh, absolutely. The scope is just massive. There 00:21:18.599 --> 00:21:21.880 are over 8 ,300 distinct species living in the 00:21:21.880 --> 00:21:24.539 spill area. But some of the most alarming research 00:21:24.539 --> 00:21:27.640 to come out has to do with the heart. Cardiotoxicity. 00:21:27.720 --> 00:21:30.180 So the oil can actually cause heart attacks in 00:21:30.180 --> 00:21:33.839 fish. Essentially, yes. A landmark 2014 study 00:21:33.839 --> 00:21:36.960 by NOAA and Stanford focused on bluefin tuna 00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:39.700 and amberjack. They found that the polycyclic 00:21:39.700 --> 00:21:42.859 aromatic hydrocarbons, the PAHs in crude oil, 00:21:43.019 --> 00:21:45.779 directly disrupt the electrical signaling pathway 00:21:45.779 --> 00:21:48.539 in heart cells. It literally short circuits the 00:21:48.539 --> 00:21:50.680 heart, causing irregular heartbeats and in high 00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:53.160 enough concentrations, cardiac arrest. And this 00:21:53.160 --> 00:21:55.299 isn't just about fishes. I mean, a vertebrate 00:21:55.299 --> 00:21:57.599 heart is a vertebrate heart. No, the mechanism 00:21:57.599 --> 00:22:00.380 is highly conserved across vertebrates. If it 00:22:00.380 --> 00:22:02.460 stops a tuna heart, it's very bad for a dolphin 00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:05.079 heart or a sea turtle heart. And speaking of 00:22:05.079 --> 00:22:08.019 dolphins, the data there is just heartbreaking. 00:22:08.460 --> 00:22:10.960 I read about the unusual mortality event. That's 00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:13.559 the official term from NOAA, and it's ongoing. 00:22:14.180 --> 00:22:16.460 In the years immediately following the spill, 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:19.180 infant dolphins in the spill zone were dying 00:22:19.180 --> 00:22:22.839 at six times the normal rate. Six times, that's... 00:22:23.529 --> 00:22:25.809 That's a population collapse. It's a generational 00:22:25.809 --> 00:22:29.210 wipeout in some pods. And when they perform necropsies 00:22:29.210 --> 00:22:32.069 on the dead calves, they found 88 % of them had 00:22:32.069 --> 00:22:35.309 abnormal or severely underdeveloped lungs. They 00:22:35.309 --> 00:22:37.470 were likely breathing in the aerosolized oil 00:22:37.470 --> 00:22:39.730 fumes at the surface, swimming through the dispersant. 00:22:39.829 --> 00:22:42.670 It just decimated a generation of cetaceans in 00:22:42.670 --> 00:22:44.269 the northern Gulf. And it wasn't just the large 00:22:44.269 --> 00:22:46.549 mammals. The reports from fishermen about their 00:22:46.549 --> 00:22:49.029 catches were gruesome. Yeah. Eyeless shrimp, 00:22:49.250 --> 00:22:51.809 crabs without claws, fish covered in lesions 00:22:51.809 --> 00:22:54.980 and open sores. In some heavily oiled areas, 00:22:55.220 --> 00:22:57.420 they were finding up to 50 % of the red snapper 00:22:57.420 --> 00:22:59.819 catch had these lesions. These are all signs 00:22:59.819 --> 00:23:03.420 of chronic, long -term exposure to toxins. It's 00:23:03.420 --> 00:23:05.839 proof that the oil didn't just wash away, it 00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:07.880 got into the food web. There's a phrase in our 00:23:07.880 --> 00:23:09.700 notes that really stuck with me. It sounds like 00:23:09.700 --> 00:23:12.039 something from a sci -fi horror movie, The Dirty 00:23:12.039 --> 00:23:14.299 Blizzard. It's a very descriptive term for a 00:23:14.299 --> 00:23:17.309 very real phenomenon. We talked about how the 00:23:17.309 --> 00:23:19.849 dispersant broke the oil into tiny droplets. 00:23:20.289 --> 00:23:23.009 Well, out in the water column, those sticky oil 00:23:23.009 --> 00:23:25.329 droplets collided with other suspended particles, 00:23:25.670 --> 00:23:29.569 sand, mud, dead plankton. And they all just stick 00:23:29.569 --> 00:23:31.450 together. They clump up into what scientists 00:23:31.450 --> 00:23:34.430 call marine snow aggregates. And as these clumps 00:23:34.430 --> 00:23:36.730 get heavier and heavier, they fall. For weeks 00:23:36.730 --> 00:23:39.349 and months after the spill, it literally snowed 00:23:39.349 --> 00:23:41.809 a mixture of oil and mud onto the ocean floor. 00:23:42.029 --> 00:23:44.789 So the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is just carpeted 00:23:44.789 --> 00:23:48.049 in this toxic sludge. In an area of over 1 ,200 00:23:48.049 --> 00:23:50.990 square miles around the wellhead, yes, up to 00:23:50.990 --> 00:23:53.789 30 % of the total spilled oil is estimated to 00:23:53.789 --> 00:23:56.430 now be mixed into the deep ocean sediments. And 00:23:56.430 --> 00:23:58.349 that's a huge problem because the deep ocean 00:23:58.349 --> 00:24:01.670 is slow, it's cold, it's dark. Things don't degrade 00:24:01.670 --> 00:24:04.450 quickly down there. That oil could be biologically 00:24:04.450 --> 00:24:07.230 active in the food chain for generations. We 00:24:07.230 --> 00:24:09.890 know for a fact it killed entire deep sea coral 00:24:09.890 --> 00:24:12.130 communities that were hundreds of years old. 00:24:12.170 --> 00:24:14.029 They were just smothered by this blizzard. It 00:24:14.029 --> 00:24:16.880 effectively suffocated the sea. floor. Now we've 00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:19.160 talked about the fish and the coral, but humans 00:24:19.160 --> 00:24:21.759 are a part of this ecosystem too, especially 00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:24.000 the cleanup workers. The human health crisis 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:25.700 is the chapter of the story that I think gets 00:24:25.700 --> 00:24:28.599 overlooked the most. You had... Tens of thousands 00:24:28.599 --> 00:24:30.539 of people out there, many of them fishermen who 00:24:30.539 --> 00:24:32.740 had just lost their livelihoods, now hired by 00:24:32.740 --> 00:24:34.779 BP to clean up the mess that took their jobs. 00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:36.619 They were out on the boat skimming, laying, boom. 00:24:36.819 --> 00:24:39.319 Breathing in the fumes 2040. Breathing the volatile 00:24:39.319 --> 00:24:41.819 organic compounds, the benzene, the toluene, 00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:43.980 and remember the dispersant. That was being sprayed 00:24:43.980 --> 00:24:46.059 from planes overhead. It was literally misting 00:24:46.059 --> 00:24:48.420 down on them all day. And the situation with 00:24:48.420 --> 00:24:51.670 protective gear. was controversial. Controversial 00:24:51.670 --> 00:24:54.549 is putting it very, very mildly. There were widespread 00:24:54.549 --> 00:24:57.009 reports later confirmed by whistleblowers and 00:24:57.009 --> 00:24:59.970 OSHA investigations that BP and its contractors 00:24:59.970 --> 00:25:03.170 actively discouraged or in some cases outright 00:25:03.170 --> 00:25:05.710 prohibited workers from wearing respirators. 00:25:05.829 --> 00:25:08.710 Why? I mean, why on earth would you stop someone 00:25:08.710 --> 00:25:11.740 from protecting their own lungs? Two words. bad 00:25:11.740 --> 00:25:14.539 optics. They did not want the nightly news to 00:25:14.539 --> 00:25:16.920 show an army of thousands of workers in hazmat 00:25:16.920 --> 00:25:19.740 suits and gas masks. It makes the situation look 00:25:19.740 --> 00:25:22.099 toxic. It makes it look dangerous to the public 00:25:22.099 --> 00:25:23.880 and to the tourism industry they were trying 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:26.059 to save. If everyone is just wearing T -shirts 00:25:26.059 --> 00:25:28.279 and hard hats, it looks like a standard safe 00:25:28.279 --> 00:25:30.680 cleanup operation. So they prioritize public 00:25:30.680 --> 00:25:32.680 relations over the respiratory health of their 00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:34.960 own workers. That is the core of the allegation. 00:25:34.980 --> 00:25:38.039 Yes. And the result. The NIH established the 00:25:38.039 --> 00:25:40.220 Gulf study to track the long term health of these 00:25:40.220 --> 00:25:43.660 workers. People reported severe respiratory problems, 00:25:43.900 --> 00:25:47.839 skin lesions, memory loss, seizures, blood in 00:25:47.839 --> 00:25:50.539 their urine. And follow up studies found levels 00:25:50.539 --> 00:25:52.599 of volatile organic compounds in their blood 00:25:52.599 --> 00:25:54.920 that were five to 10 times higher than the general 00:25:54.920 --> 00:25:57.480 population. That's just infuriating. And it wasn't 00:25:57.480 --> 00:26:00.420 just the health impacts. The entire economy of 00:26:00.420 --> 00:26:02.559 the Gulf Coast was practically erased overnight. 00:26:02.839 --> 00:26:06.019 It was a total shutdown. At its peak, 36 percent 00:26:06.019 --> 00:26:08.259 of all federal waters in the Gulf were closed 00:26:08.259 --> 00:26:10.779 to fishing. The seafood industry alone. suffered 00:26:10.779 --> 00:26:13.140 immediate losses of nearly a quarter of a billion 00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:15.880 dollars. And tourism. I mean, who wants to book 00:26:15.880 --> 00:26:17.680 a family vacation to a beach where you had to 00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:20.519 scrub tar off your kids' feet? Exactly. The projected 00:26:20.519 --> 00:26:23.859 tourism losses were over $22 billion. Real estate 00:26:23.859 --> 00:26:26.779 values along the coast plummeted. It just destroyed 00:26:26.779 --> 00:26:29.059 the economic engine of the entire region for 00:26:29.059 --> 00:26:32.400 years. So we have the disaster, the failed engineering, 00:26:32.579 --> 00:26:35.079 the toxic cleanup, the dead wildlife, the sick 00:26:35.079 --> 00:26:37.400 workers. It all leads to the big question. How 00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:39.480 did this happen? And who, at the end of the day, 00:26:39.500 --> 00:26:41.900 is to blame? The investigations were incredibly 00:26:41.900 --> 00:26:44.759 thorough. You had the Coast Guard, the Bureau 00:26:44.759 --> 00:26:47.019 of Ocean Energy Management, a special presidential 00:26:47.019 --> 00:26:50.000 commission. They all dug deep. And while there 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:52.900 were dozens of small failures, the ultimate root 00:26:52.900 --> 00:26:56.720 cause often comes back to one single boring material. 00:26:57.519 --> 00:27:00.059 Cement. Cement. It's the most basic material 00:27:00.059 --> 00:27:02.680 on Earth. But in this case, it was the absolute 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:05.480 linchpin. It is the final barrier. When you finish 00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:08.160 drilling a well like this, you pump cement down 00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:10.359 to the bottom to seal the gap between the final 00:27:10.359 --> 00:27:12.799 steel pipe and the surrounding rock formation. 00:27:13.099 --> 00:27:15.259 That cement has to be perfect. It has to hold 00:27:15.259 --> 00:27:17.940 back all that gas pressure forever. And at the 00:27:17.940 --> 00:27:20.619 Macondo well... The cement failed. Why? Was it 00:27:20.619 --> 00:27:22.779 just a bad batch of cement? It was a specialized 00:27:22.779 --> 00:27:25.059 unstable mixture. They used what's called nitrogen 00:27:25.059 --> 00:27:27.880 foamed cement, which was a decision made by Halliburton 00:27:27.880 --> 00:27:30.400 and BP. Nitrogen, you mean like with bubbles 00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:33.900 in it? Exactly. They inject nitrogen gas into 00:27:33.900 --> 00:27:36.839 the cement slurry to make it lighter. This reduces 00:27:36.839 --> 00:27:39.079 the pressure on the fragile rock formation down 00:27:39.079 --> 00:27:42.079 below, which can be good, but it can also be 00:27:42.079 --> 00:27:44.759 very unstable. If the nitrogen bubbles link up, 00:27:44.859 --> 00:27:47.779 the cement becomes weak and permeable. The gas 00:27:47.779 --> 00:27:49.990 can migrate. right through it like a sponge. 00:27:50.250 --> 00:27:52.150 And they didn't test this mixture properly. Oh, 00:27:52.170 --> 00:27:54.190 they did test it. But the post -spill investigations 00:27:54.190 --> 00:27:57.089 found that Halliburton's own test results showed 00:27:57.089 --> 00:27:59.869 the mixture was unstable. Those results were 00:27:59.869 --> 00:28:03.390 not properly communicated or were ignored. But 00:28:03.390 --> 00:28:05.609 the much bigger failure was the final safety 00:28:05.609 --> 00:28:08.059 check. called the negative pressure test. This 00:28:08.059 --> 00:28:10.220 is the real smoking gun, isn't it? This is the 00:28:10.220 --> 00:28:12.440 moment they could have and should have stopped 00:28:12.440 --> 00:28:15.180 everything. Before they disconnected the rig 00:28:15.180 --> 00:28:17.420 from the well, they had to prove the cement seal 00:28:17.420 --> 00:28:19.960 was holding. So they deliberately reduced the 00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:22.259 pressure inside the drill pipe to see if any 00:28:22.259 --> 00:28:24.420 pressure from the reservoir would leak back in. 00:28:24.579 --> 00:28:26.380 So if the pressure on the gauge stays steady, 00:28:26.519 --> 00:28:28.720 the well is sealed. If the pressure starts to 00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:32.059 rise, you've got a leak. It's that simple. And 00:28:32.059 --> 00:28:34.079 when they ran the test on the deepwater horizon, 00:28:34.359 --> 00:28:37.920 the pressure rose. Significantly. It was a clear, 00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:41.880 unambiguous sign of a major leak. So why on earth 00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:44.660 didn't they stop? They rationalized it away. 00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:47.740 The managers on the rig came up with a completely 00:28:47.740 --> 00:28:49.920 baseless theory they called the bladder effect, 00:28:50.259 --> 00:28:52.779 arguing that the pressure reading was a glitch 00:28:52.779 --> 00:28:55.950 in the system, not a real leak. It's a classic 00:28:55.950 --> 00:28:58.650 case of what they call confirmation bias. They 00:28:58.650 --> 00:29:01.109 so badly wanted to be done with this well. The 00:29:01.109 --> 00:29:03.410 rush to completion. I saw that phrase over and 00:29:03.410 --> 00:29:06.019 over. That was the culture. The rig was more 00:29:06.019 --> 00:29:08.359 than a month behind schedule. Every extra day 00:29:08.359 --> 00:29:10.839 on that well cost over a million dollars. The 00:29:10.839 --> 00:29:12.880 managers on the rig, both from Transocean and 00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:15.140 BP, were under immense pressure to finish up 00:29:15.140 --> 00:29:17.500 and move on to the next job. And in that rush, 00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:19.759 safety took a backseat to schedule and cost. 00:29:19.940 --> 00:29:22.259 And that bladder effect theory, that rationalization, 00:29:22.299 --> 00:29:25.140 cost 11 people their lives. So how did the court 00:29:25.140 --> 00:29:27.240 see all of this? How was the blame officially 00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:29.680 divided? The gavel came down and it came down 00:29:29.680 --> 00:29:32.960 hard. In a 2014 ruling, a federal judge found 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:36.259 BP guilty of gross negligence. Explain the legal 00:29:36.259 --> 00:29:38.460 difference there. What's the difference between 00:29:38.460 --> 00:29:41.720 simple negligence and gross negligence? Simple 00:29:41.720 --> 00:29:44.319 negligence is carelessness. It's, oops, I made 00:29:44.319 --> 00:29:47.799 a mistake. Gross negligence is a conscious, voluntary 00:29:47.799 --> 00:29:50.480 disregard for the need to use reasonable care. 00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:52.759 It implies that you knew there was a significant 00:29:52.759 --> 00:29:55.519 risk and you proceeded anyway. It's a much higher 00:29:55.519 --> 00:29:57.740 bar to prove. And it carries a much, much bigger 00:29:57.740 --> 00:29:59.940 fine. A much bigger fine under the Clean Water 00:29:59.940 --> 00:30:02.759 Act. The judge actually took the rarest step 00:30:02.759 --> 00:30:04.940 of apportioning the blame by percentage among 00:30:04.940 --> 00:30:06.799 the companies involved. Okay, so who got what 00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:10.049 slice of the blame pie? BP, as the well operator, 00:30:10.309 --> 00:30:13.730 was found to be 67 % responsible. Trandoshan, 00:30:13.849 --> 00:30:15.930 the owner and operator of the rig itself, was 00:30:15.930 --> 00:30:18.970 found 30 % responsible. And Halliburton, the 00:30:18.970 --> 00:30:21.210 contractor who provided that faulty foamed cement, 00:30:21.450 --> 00:30:25.470 was found 3 % responsible. So BP, by far, took 00:30:25.470 --> 00:30:27.650 the massive hit. They did. On the criminal side, 00:30:27.829 --> 00:30:30.109 the company pleaded guilty to 11 counts of felony 00:30:30.109 --> 00:30:32.869 manslaughter. They pleaded guilty to lying to 00:30:32.869 --> 00:30:34.910 Congress specifically about those flow rates 00:30:34.910 --> 00:30:36.509 we talked about. That goes right back to the 00:30:36.509 --> 00:30:39.450 internal email cover -up. Exactly. And the final 00:30:39.450 --> 00:30:43.150 price tag for all of this. In 2016, a final civil 00:30:43.150 --> 00:30:47.309 settlement was reached for $20 .8 billion. That 00:30:47.309 --> 00:30:49.829 is, to this day, the largest environmental settlement 00:30:49.829 --> 00:30:52.269 in the history of the United States. Wow. And 00:30:52.269 --> 00:30:54.410 when you add in the cleanup costs, the victim 00:30:54.410 --> 00:30:56.730 compensation funds, the other fines and penalties. 00:30:57.799 --> 00:31:01.339 The total cost to BP has been over $65 billion. 00:31:02.079 --> 00:31:04.059 It's a number so big it almost loses meaning. 00:31:04.180 --> 00:31:07.220 It bankrupts the imagination. It absolutely crippled 00:31:07.220 --> 00:31:09.460 the company for years. They had to sell off major 00:31:09.460 --> 00:31:11.839 assets all across the globe just to pay for the 00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:13.920 damage they caused in the Gulf. So here we are. 00:31:13.980 --> 00:31:15.900 It's been more than a decade since the well was 00:31:15.900 --> 00:31:18.059 capped. The news cameras are gone. But I want 00:31:18.059 --> 00:31:19.279 to leave our listeners with a thought that's 00:31:19.279 --> 00:31:21.240 really been nagging me throughout this research. 00:31:21.359 --> 00:31:23.200 We talked about the cleanup, the skimming, the 00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:25.640 burning. The most generous estimates say they 00:31:25.640 --> 00:31:28.119 only recovered or removed about 25 % of the oil. 00:31:28.279 --> 00:31:30.359 That's the high -end estimate, yes. So where 00:31:30.359 --> 00:31:33.980 is the other 75 %? Where did 3 .5 million barrels 00:31:33.980 --> 00:31:36.559 of crude oil go? That's the mystery of the missing 00:31:36.559 --> 00:31:39.599 oil. And the answer is it's not missing. It's 00:31:39.599 --> 00:31:42.400 in that dirty blizzard on the seafloor. It's 00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:44.980 still dissolved in those deepwater plumes. It's 00:31:44.980 --> 00:31:47.779 been integrated into the food web from the plankton 00:31:47.779 --> 00:31:50.200 all the way up to the dolphins. It didn't disappear. 00:31:50.420 --> 00:31:53.700 It just changed form and location. And deepwater 00:31:53.700 --> 00:31:56.579 drilling hasn't stopped. In fact, if you look 00:31:56.579 --> 00:31:59.039 at the permits, they're drilling in even deeper 00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:01.960 water now than they were in 2010. They are. The 00:32:01.960 --> 00:32:04.380 so -called Golden Triangle in the Deepwater Gulf 00:32:04.380 --> 00:32:06.920 is still booming. The technology has improved. 00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:09.900 The safety regulations are stronger. But the 00:32:09.900 --> 00:32:12.220 risk is still inherent. So I guess the final 00:32:12.220 --> 00:32:14.799 question is, have we actually fixed the problem? 00:32:14.940 --> 00:32:17.079 Or have we just gotten better at managing and 00:32:17.079 --> 00:32:20.119 maybe hiding the risk? With that toxic snow still 00:32:20.119 --> 00:32:22.400 sitting on the bottom of the ocean, is the Macondo 00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:25.039 disaster actually over? Or are we just living 00:32:25.039 --> 00:32:27.660 in the long, slow, invisible tale of a permanent 00:32:27.660 --> 00:32:30.059 change to the Gulf ecosystem? It's a question 00:32:30.059 --> 00:32:31.960 we might not have a full answer to for another 00:32:31.960 --> 00:32:34.640 50 years. Biology moves at a very slow pace. 00:32:34.839 --> 00:32:37.880 But the scar, both on the ecosystem and the people 00:32:37.880 --> 00:32:40.579 there, that scar is definitely permanent. Something 00:32:40.579 --> 00:32:44.119 to think about. That's it for this deep dive. 00:32:44.259 --> 00:32:44.880 Thanks for listening.