Industrial Risk
Deep water horizon oil spill study case
The problem: semi-submersible drilling offshore drilling blow up
I/ Contexts Economic context 18,5 million of barrels/day oil consumption in US in 2009/2010 US oil import 60% in 2009.

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Production context American oil production 5.8 million of barrels/day. Production divided /2 between years 1986-1999 in Gulf of Mexico. 1/3 of the American production is coming from Gulf of Mexico.

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Political context Bush Administration signed and voted the bills to increase the oil production and in the same time to reduce the security in offshore oil production in Gulf of Mexico Exoneration of NEPA (ecological Law) for very deep oil prospection.

II/ The tragedy Location The offshore platform is located in Gulf of Mexico. More precisely, the semi-submersible platform, before it had sunk, was in charge of drilling the Macondo prospect (concession) in the Mississippi Canyon which is a part of the American EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).

Main Actors To understand what happen to the platform and why it sank, we have to discover who were the main actors and their responsibilities in this tragedy. Deep water Horizon Deep water Horizon is the name of the offshore platform which sank in the Gulf of Mexico. It has the World record for a drilling platform in deep water (10685 meters deep). It has been built in 2001. 115 crew members were working on the platform.

Hyundai Heavy Industry HHI is a famous Korean Offshore platform Constructor. This company is the biggest shipbuilder in the world. The construction site for the platform is located in Ulsan, Korea Transocean (Swiss company) Transocean is the owner of the DWH. It was founded in 1919 in Louisiana State. Currently this company has changed its nationality and became Swiss. http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/ViewCompany-Video-499.html

BP (British company) British Petroleum is the user and not the owner of DWH platform. The British oil company bought the