Deepwater+Horizon+Oil+Spill

This page contains information and resources pertaining to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. This page is set up to help provide resources for you to use in the classroom. Feel free to add other resources and share feedback with each other about which is resources are most helpful or how you have used them in the classroom using the comments tab at the top of the page.

> On April 20, 2010, an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig leased by the oil company BP, set off a blaze that killed 11 crew members. Two days later, it sank about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast and crude oil began gushing out of a broken pipe 5,000 feet below the surface. A month later, after a series of failed attempts to plug the leak, oil had begun to stain the coasts and marshes of Louisiana. The spill appears to be the worst oil disaster in American history: by the most conservative of the government estimates released May 27th, the spill by then had released almost twice as much oil as the Exxon Valdez, which spilled about 250,000 barrels of oil into Prince Williams Bay in Alaska in 1989. > — From the [|Times Topics page on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill] >
 * Summary**

Key Classroom Resources
Online resources that provide a great tools to use in the classroom for an overall summary of the incident.
 * [|Interactive Guide to the Gulf Oil Spill (BBC)] - great animated slideshow of generally what happened and what steps were taken to mitigate the disaster
 * [|Interactive Timeline - Gulf Oil Spill (The Wall Street Journal)] - timeline general overview of disaster and mitigation
 * [|Gulf Oil Spill Resource (New York Times)] - detailed but well articulated set of surface spill area maps, explanation and diagrams of investigation and efforts to stop the leak, wildlife effects, etc.
 * [|Photo slideshow (National Geographic)]

General Info
Website with general info and resources surrounding the disaster. Some are more focused on the accident investigation, others on the environmental effects. The general content of each is indicated.
 * [|wikipedia summary] - overall summary of incident
 * [|BP] (company in charge of drilling project) investigation of disaster, some environment and economic restoration efforts)
 * [|Transocean] (company who owned the drilling rig) technical rig investigation resources
 * [|Bridge the Gulf Project]
 * [|Smithsonian - Ocean Portal] (Education Resources)
 * [|NOAA education resources] (Education Resources)
 * [|New York Times (oil spill in the classroom)] (Education Resources)
 * [|Gulf Sea Grant] (Environmental)
 * [|NOAA resources] (Environmental)

Investigation Reports

 * [|BP Investigation Report] (pdf)
 * [|BP Investigation Report (Video simulation)]
 * [|Transocean Report part 1] (pdf)
 * [|Transocean Report part 2] (pdf)

Oil Rig

 * [|Deepwater Horizon Fact Sheet]
 * [|blow out preventer failure] (video simulation)
 * [|Automatic Mode Function](video simulation)

Surface Spill

 * [|Gulf Oil Spill Tracker] (interactive map) and form for citizen reporting (SkyTruth.org)
 * [|Map and Estimates of the Oil Spilled] (The New York Times)
 * [|Where Oil Has Made Landfall] (The New York Times)
 * [|Gulf Oil Spill 2010 Projected Trajectory] (trajectory maps from Louisiana Earth)
 * [|Map of surface oil over time (BBC)]
 * [|Trajectory map] (NOAA)

Rig Fire

 * [|Rig fire at Deepwater Horizon April 21, '10] (video) at //CNN// iReport
 * [|Satellite Images of Rig Fire]on the [|CIMSS] Satellite Blog