“Deepwater Horizon” is a riveting film about the BP 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that was the worst in U.S. history, costing 11 lives and taking 87 days to bring under control.
The brunt of the blame descended on BP which did its best to deflect some of it while promising to mend its ways.
BP is not happy with the film as shown by this statement from spokesman Geoff Morrell:
“The Deepwater Horizon movie is Hollywood’s take on a tragic and complex accident. It is not an accurate portrayal of the events that led to the accident, our people, or the character of our company. In fact, it ignores the conclusions reached in every official investigation: that the accident was the result of multiple errors made by a number of companies.
“Coming as it does six-and-a-half years after the accident, the movie does not reflect who we are today, the lengths we’ve gone to restore the Gulf, the work we’ve done to become safer, and the trust we’ve earned back around the world.”
The film got the second biggest box office over the weekend:
1 Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children - $28.5 million
2 Deepwater Horizon - $20.6 million
3 The Magnificent Seven - $15.7 million
4 Storks - $13.8 million
5 Sully - $8.4 million
6 Masterminds - $6.6 million
7 Queen of Katwe - $2.6 million
8 Don’t Breathe - $2.4 million
9 Bridget Jones’s Baby - $2.3 million
Snowden - $2 million
Movie is Fast-Paced, Confusing at Points
Moviegoers are going to hear a lot of techno-babble such as the “cement bond log” and see lots of explosions and fire but will be hard-pressed to know exactly what happened or who is the most to blame. Five million barrels of oil escaped and the cost was put at $13 billion.
The complicated technology involved in deep-sea oil drilling, which can tap reserves almost two miles below the surface, will be a revelation to many. There are nearly 500 such rigs worldwide with the North Sea having the most (184 in one recent count).
President George W. Bush in July 2008 lifted a 1990 executive order by George H. Bush banning offshore drilling. Drilling was allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
President Obama in 2008 allowed for limited offshore drilling as part of an extensive energy independence overhaul.
In Florida, many counties, cities, chambers of commerce, and other local agencies passed resolutions against oil drilling in Florida waters.
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Obama announced in 2010 that he was opening new areas in U.S. coastal waters to offshore drilling for gas and oil. This was in stark contrast to his reaction only a few weeks later to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In November 2010, the Obama administration rescinded the decision to open new areas.
Achenbach Wrote Book
A detailed explanation of the BP oil spill has been given in a review Sept. 29 by the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach, who had written a book on the disaster called "A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea."
Failure to cap the undersea well with sufficient concrete was the main problem. “Ominous” indications that such a failure was taking place were ignored by some of the supervisors on the scene. A review by slate.com says “Years of cutting corners, not one careless mistake, caused the explosion.”
Some of the blame is put on site leader Donald Vidrine, played by John Malkovich, who is concerned that the operation is 43 days behind schedule and costing $1 million a day. Achenbach also puts a good share of the blame on “a broader array of mistakes and compromises by BP engineers in Houston.”
Achenbach says BP finally ended up plugging the well by “using a piece of hardware that was sitting on a dock all along in Southern Louisiana—the 3-ram capping stack.”
Many other efforts had failed including blind shear rams that didn’t work, containment domes that floated away, and a “top kill” with mud that was a “huge disappointment,” he wrote.
Writes Achenbach: “When gas surged up the well after an inadequate cement job, the violent kick bent the drillpipe that had been threaded through the blowout preventer. Thus when the blind shear rams closed, to cut the pipe, they couldn’t get a clean bite on the drillpipe and it remained open, allowing the gas to reach the rig…boom."
Some recent examples of the creative ways that people have tried to deny obvious guilt instead of simply admitting the truth.
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Tom Corry, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Dept. of Health and Human Services, has resigned his post after two weeks on the job.
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