It is now 15 years since an explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig operating in the Gulf Coast region, triggering the worst oil spill to occur in US waters and one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. Eleven workers lost their lives, and 134 million gallons of oil flowed from the wellhead before it was finally capped 87 days later. The tragedy put a national spotlight on the risks associated with offshore drilling and exploration as well as on the Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump has renamed the Gulf of America, a unique American landscape rich in economic, natural, ecological, and cultural resources.
In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting oil spill, $500 million in criminal penalties were set aside in an endowment at the National Academy of Sciences for its new Gulf Research Program (GRP) to “carry out studies, projects, and other activities” focused on offshore energy production, human health, and environmental protection in the gulf region and along the US Outer Continental Shelf.
The Safety of Offshore Oil and Gas Production
Is the offshore environment safer now than in 2010? There are grounds for optimism. A 2023 National Academies consensus study determined that the offshore industry in the gulf has shown considerable improvement in systemic risk management because of reforms implemented in response to the Deepwater Horizon spill. These reforms include major investments in improving offshore safety on the part of industry and government.
For its part, the GRP has awarded over $20 million in grants as part of its Safer Offshore Energy Systems program, which aims to decrease overall risk, reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic accident occurring, and—should an incident occur—lessen the severity of consequences to people and the environment. But the National Academies study also found that, while progress has been made, work remains to be done in establishing an industrywide, industry-led commitment to a culture that supports safety.
Assessing the current safety of offshore operations is not a straightforward task. Vigilance is important because a major lesson of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting oil spill is that the underlying risks of offshore operations are not static and shift over time. Although there hasn’t been a subsequent blowout similar to Deepwater Horizon, other risks have come to light, including spills associated with aging infrastructure. The Offshore Situation Room (OSR), a serious gaming exercise convened by the GRP in 2021, examined some of these emerging risks, including legacy infrastructure and the potential for cyberattacks.
A central insight emerging from the OSR was the importance of dialogue between stakeholders, including community representatives. As a follow-up, the GRP has convened a set of workshops bringing together representatives from the Gulf and Alaska, the two regions affected by the most serious offshore oil spills in US history, to share their experiences, knowledge, and best practices with the aim of helping communities prepare for and recover from oil spills.
Another key lesson of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting oil spill was how little was understood about fundamental baseline conditions of the gulf. The GRP has made a major contribution to addressing this gap through a substantial investment in supporting better understanding of the gulf's Loop Current. Thanks to GRP’s Understanding Gulf Ocean Systemsinitiative, the gulf is now one of the most intensively sampled bodies of water in the world, providing the foundation for improved decision-making related to weather events and offshore energy production.