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A Vicious Cycle

By Joe Bigley

 

Editor's note: Over four months have passed since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and setting off a chain of destructive events with economic, political, and environmental repurcussions that will reverberate for decades. British Petroleum looks like it'll come out of the disaster with merely a few cuts and bruises. In this illustrative essay, artist Joe Bigley recounts the tragic events, and the resurrection of BP.

All illustrations copyright Joe Bigley.

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March 31, 2010 President Obama endorses offshore drilling in parts of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. In his speech he mentions, "We'll employ new technology to reduce the impact of oil exploration. We'll protect areas vital to tourism, the environment and our National Security."

 

Since 2001, inspections on several deepwater oil rigs have been avoided or breezed through by inspectors. The latest inspection to happen at a glance occurred on April 1, 2010 when inspectors reportedly spent just two hours above the Deepwater Horizon rig.

 

British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes, killing 11, injuring 17, with 98 survivors.

 

 

 

 

President Obama makes his obligatory trips to the Gulf Coast to monitor the situation. Later he will vacation there with his family. As a way to symbolize the safety of the region, for tourism reasons, he takes a dip in Gulf waters.

 

 

Oil dispersants widely used to minimize the appearance of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Corexit, produced by Nalco Holding Company, is—ironically—a petroleum based product whose toxicity levels were not released to the public. Its effectiveness in masking the visibility of oil on the surface of water helped encourage the audacity of the Obama administration to claim that 70 percent of the oil from the spill has been in one way or another accounted for, prompting immediate rebuttals from the scientific community.

 

Efforts to place a 100 ton containment dome over the spill site failed. Crystals forming in the dome created excessive buoyancy in addition to clogging the channel intended to direct the crude to be collected.

 

BP opened up the possibility to what was coined the "Junk Shot" as a means to fill the pipe with ... junk. Used tires and golf balls were the primary objects touted in such a maneuver. BP opened itself up to suggestions to the public on objects, materials, and methodologies to hinder the spill. In effect, BP showed its hand at its unpreparedness for such an event.

 

In Congress' first examination of the Deepwater Horizon incident, the three main players, BP, Halliburton (a contractor that worked on the rig), and Transocean (the actual owner of the rig), tried to rationalize the other's larger role in the disaster.

 

On May 20, 2010, the “Spill Cam” goes live. Just as the coverage of the first Gulf War gave Americans a cockpit view of the destruction of Iraq, Spill Cam filled a similar role for this event's devastation. Plastered over all subsequent media coverage, the vivid images of the crude hemorrhaging into the Gulf's fragile waters gave the event a face from the ocean floor, compounding the tragedy with visual forces.

 

 

On the 59th day of the spill, BP's C.E.O. Tony Hayward became the scapegoat poster-boy for the disaster. With shades of Michael Brown’s tenure as head of the Federal Emergency Management Association during the Hurricane Katrina debacle in mind, the vilification of Hayward emphasizes the failures of an individual, rather than the darker forces of capitalism, for such a systemic failure. The oil spill is given a face and place to lay blame—much easier than dealing with the larger problems outright.

 

True to capitalist interest, Joe Barton, a Republican Congressman from Texas, takes it upon himself to apologize to Hayward for the "$20 Billion Shakedown," sparking a backlash from everyone counted as a citizen of Earth. Barton later, as an act to "clear the record" in the event that anything that he said had been "misconstrued,” said, plainly: “I want to apologize for that misconstrued misconstruction." This act revealed the political necessity of such a forced “apology” when he had made clear in the first apology that he was only speaking for himself and no one else.

 

 

On July 15, 2010 the spill is stopped. The successful capping apparatus is designed by an undisclosed plumber.

 

Hayward is removed as BP's C.E.O. Rather than an outright dismissal, the blundering Brit is reassigned to BP's Russian initiative BP-TNK. The move shows that even when an individual's verbal and behavioral incompetence escalates the worst environmental disaster in American history, he can stay on the company's payroll.

 

After the successful capping of the spill and the "Junk Shot" theory is removed from the table, "Static Kill" is employed, a method of pumping mud and cement into the well to effectively seal it permanently. National Incident Commander Thad Allen needed time to evaluate the situation before he could give BP the go ahead to initiate "Static Kill."

 

The capitalist cycle continues. BP's stock price on the day of the explosion, April 20, 2010, was $60.48 per share. It dipped as low as $27.02 per share on June 25, 2010. After the effective capping of the spill and before any competent evaluation of the incident’s impact on the region's health—both environmentally and economically—the share price is on the rebound, marking $35.26 per share (as of August 30). A picture perfect scenario of demand usurping disaster.

 

August 31, 2010

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Joe Bigley is a multi-media visual artist who has shown work in the U.S., Europe, and China. He received his M.F.A. in sculpture from Alfred...