BP Deepwater Horizon Platform Disaster - Research Paper Example

One of these groups was stakeholders and authorities in the area of oil emergency and disaster management. The other group comprised of ordinary inhabitants who were in one way or the other victims of the BP Oil Spill Disaster. Through comprehensive analysis of data collected, it came to light that if there were strict standards in place, the BP Oil Spill disaster could have been avoided. Partly to be blamed for the disaster also was the absence of law enforcement as far as safety practices in the oil and gas industry are concerned.

In this regard, recommendations on the enactment and enforcement of basic safety laws in the oil and gas industry were made. Indeed the implementation of these recommendations would be again a step towards the dream of ensuring disaster-free operation in the oil and gas industry. INTRODUCTION Background to the Study Oil is one of the major sources of revenue and income for the government. Apart from this, the usefulness of oil and gas to the running of local and international industries as well as the use of oil as the major source of energy for the country are some other reasons why oil and gas exploration might not end any time soon in America.

According to the API (2011), the “oil and natural gas industry that supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.5% of our nation’s GDP.” Yet again, these are reasons why oil exploration continues to be paramount to the United States government. These benefits notwithstanding, there is the need to ensuring that oil and gas exploration becomes an absolute blessing to the country rather than a curse. In most countries, the oil curse has been a term that stands for tensions and disputes that arise out of the distribution of funds that are accrued from the mining of oil where some factions claim ownership of the oil and thus a greater share of the revenue.

Clearly, the United States has developed beyond such uprisings. However, the issue of spillage of large and harmful quantities of oil in the course of oil and gas extraction is perhaps a curse that the country has not been exempted from yet. As technology and the invention of complex machinery and equipment abound, one would have expected that news of oil spillage would hardly be heard among oil companies in the United States but the April 2010 BP oil spillage incidence did not just come to be an ordinary spillage but one that was serious enough to be classified as a disaster.

It is not surprising therefore that Lintner (2010) posits that the BP Oil Spill is “the greatest environmental disaster in United States history.” Such other oil spill disasters come with thorning effects on living species and the environment at large. Typically in the case of BP in April 2010, there was massive loss of living creatures in the ocean while waters in the ocean and the soil at the immediate shore had their own versions of destruction. Then of course there was the loss of thousands of US dollars that could have been channeled into national development.

Due to the harsh consequences that come with such disasters as oil spills, the researcher is committed to using this research as a platform to delve into the causes, effects, management, and prevention of oil spill disasters by using BP’s case as a case study. Research Aims and Objectives This is a case study that aims at revisiting the BP Oil Deepwater Horizon platform disaster to find out the potential causes of the disaster, how well or poorly the disaster was managed, effects of the disaster on living things and the environment, as well as a prudent measure that can be put in place to curtail future occurrences.