Six Years Past Disaster: Reclaiming the Gulf of Mexico from Oil

All it takes is a single broken cement seal to trigger massive environmental collapse the type that does not simply go away.

After taking the lives of eleven workers and of millions more of sea life, oil from the Deepwater Horizon well remains in the Gulf of Mexico, more than six years after the 87-day disaster. Argyle Commercial recognise how difficult it must have been: dealing with the largest oil spill in history, not only as oil and as ignited methane spewed from the sunken rig, but also attempting to reverse its effects on the environment. Much work remains to be done, unfortunately.

More Than a PR Problem

More than 3 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf in 2010, a significant portion of which sits on the ocean floor today. BP, the company responsible for the mishap, asserts that the Gulf of Mexico has recovered since, a claim that the Natural Resource Damage Assessment described as 'inappropriate as well as premature'. They say that the effects of the BP oil spill will last for generations, and every organisation involved, save for BP, agrees.

Steps to Recovery

Unless people come up with new cleanup strategies and marine oil spill equipment come into production, the remediation of the Gulf of Mexico will be up to nature and time. Fortunately, local fishermen are already reporting increased catch volumes over the past year. The Food and Drug Administration has also cleared the region's food supply for excess hydrocarbons.

Data on species other than edible sea life remains grim if not unclear, however. Months before the spill even occurred, local government agencies already mentioned a 'mortality event', and dolphins have died at an accelerated rate along the Gulf Coast ever since. Scientists confirmed that the oil spill wiped out essentially all life on the Gulf's sea floor.

Oil spills are at their most damaging when they go beyond humans' control. Cleaning up an oil spill is easy enough with the proper strategy and equipment, but we would be misguided to think that mistakes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are without long-term consequences.

In time, nature will heal itself. All we can and must do now is avoid causing further harm. Contact Argyle Commercial for more information.