Gulf Coast Chaos

Gulf Coast Chaos

Mark Alston

Introduction to Effective Written Communications

6 July 2010

Dr. Rose Safir

Gulf Coast Chaos

On April 20, British Petroleum (BP) was two days away from temporarily capping the oil rig known as Deepwater Horizon. The oil rig had been drilled and the pumping of the oil was handed off to a production platform or pipeline. During the disconnection process the rig suffered a blowout; a "blowout" occurs when a mixture of pressurized natural gas, oil, mud, and water escapes from a well, shoots up the drill pipe to the surface, expanding and catches on fire. Subsequently, the oil rig ignited and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Wells are equipped with structures called blowout preventers. Subsequently, the oil rig ignited and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Wells are equipped with structures called blowout preventers. The preventer, one manual and an automatic backup, sits on the wellhead and is designed to shut off the flow oil and tamp the well. In the Deepwater Horizons' incident, the preventers failed to start; both switches (McQuaid, 2010).

This oil spill off the Gulf Coast of Mexico has had an immediate impact on the local community and on the entire seafood industry. According to (Charter, 2010) a local resident, "It is so big and expanding so fast that it's pretty much beyond human response that can be effective. ... You're looking at a long-term poisoning of the area. Ultimately, this will have a multidecade impact". For centuries, generations of fishermen have made a living selling their days catch to restaurants which provide mouth watering seafood to some of our favorite restaurants throughout the United States and abroad. According to White (2010), the economic impact of this manmade disaster has hit the local fishing industry the hardest. Louisiana seafood production has an estimated economic impact of $2.4 billion. Production of about twenty three percent of that amount has been temporarily shut down by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because of the oil spill (Whoriskey, 2010). The enormous blob of light Louisiana crude floating in the Gulf of Mexico has already closed oyster beds, shut down shrimpers, cancelled fishing tournaments and panicked beach hoteliers from New Orleans to Key West (Whoriskey, 2010). Businesses that once relied on tourism as a way of making ends meet are now using their boats to help with the cleanup effort. However, those businesses that are usually slow this time of year .i.e. lodging facilities are booked with cleanup crews and out-of-state media. These lodging facilities are hiring additional cleaning staff to meet the demand (White, 2010). What is clear is that the most immediate economic concern involves the fishing industry.

According to Rigzone (2010) almost 74,000 claims have been filed against the mega fuel giant and more than 39,000 payments have been made to those affected by