Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

On 20 April 2010, an explosion and a fire took place at the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 65 kilometres from the Louisiana coast in the United States. The incident took the lives of 11 crew members and caused an oil spill with an estimated 1,000 barrels (159,000 litres) of oil leaking daily into the Gulf of Mexico. At least 22.7 million litres of crude oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico so far, with the oil reaching the wetlands of Louisiana. The Deepwater Horizon – one of the most technologically advanced offshore drilling platforms in the world – was leased by the oil company BP. The US government and environmental non-governmental organisations have been pressuring BP to take better action to contain and investigate the cause of the oil spill. The incident has raised a number of questions related to issues such as the safety of oil rigs, dependence on fossil fuels as a source of energy, development of nuclear energy as an alternative source of energy, and levels of preparedness in oil rigs not only against natural disasters but also against man-made ones.