By Jesse Buchman

We don't know exactly what happened to cause the blowout, but there will no doubt be months of investigations. The basic idea of what happened is that Transocean, under contract with BP, was attempting to drill a new well, not too far from the existing wells in deep water surrounding of the Gulf of Mexico. The well was almost complete in fact; the well seemed to be very far along, that the danger of blowout appeared to be very low. The casing had been cemented, and people were working on getting a production pipe installed. A pressure surge happened and could not be controlled. The equipment includes all kinds of alarms, and a huge 450 ton device called a blowout preventer, but it was still not possible to control the pressure flow. At such high pressures, some of the natural gas separated from the oil within the hydrocarbon stream and caught on fire causing the explosion.

For the last 7 days, BP has been trying to use sub-sea robots, working at 5,000 feet below the surface, to engage the blowout preventer and turn off the flow, which seems to amount to about 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) a day. There are two different ways BP is using to cut off the flow. One way is to drill a second well to intercept the first well, and inject a special heavy fluid to cut off the flow. Workers will then permanently seal off the first well. This procedure is expected to take 7 months. The other way is creating an underwater collection device (dome) that would trap escaping oil near the bottom of the sea and funnel it for collection. According to the NOAA, this way has been proven successful in shallower water but never at this depth (5,000 feet)

More than 1,000 people are working on the cleanup, with 32 ships and several aircrafts. The vessels are dragging long booms to bring the oil on the surface, which is still a thin, not yet thick. The planes spray chemicals that can separate the oil from the water, hoping that it will evaporate. Coast Guards said they would consider a controlled burn of the oil. Lots of oil would be trapped in containing booms and set on fire a way that could continually burn 50% to 95% of the oil.

The oil spill happened in deep water miles from land. Some of the oil clumps together to form tar balls. These balls of tar can possibly wash up on beaches and impact the local wildlife. Plumes of oil are drifting thousands of feet beneath the ocean's surface. The impact this oil might have on deep sea life isn't fully understood. There are complicated ecosystems deep beneath the ocean that might die by being flooded with oil. State and federal governments are spending millions of dollars to try to contain the oil spill while engineers try to find a way to stop it. BP abandoned a try to plug the oil well with mud.

The oil spill relates to our Health and Social Education because it killed a lot of animal life. Think about it! A bunch of wild life being flooded with oil! I wouldn’t want that to happen to me. The good side that this happened is that now the society has gained knowledge and now there is less of a chance for it to happen again.