San Francisco: Just a few weeks after the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster deep sea drilling is about to resume in the same vicinity.
A report in Harper’s magazine says Louisiana firm LLOG Exploration Offshore LLC, plans to drill into the Macondo Prospect reservoir, location of the BP well that exploded so catastrophically on April, 2010.
That tragedy claimed 11 lives, injured even more and caused the worst oil spill in US waters as the unstaunched well flowed for 87 days.
Ramifications of the disaster have echoed down the years and last month, near the fateful anniversary, the federal government brought in new rules for blowout preventers, the safety device that was deemed to have failed in the Deepwater Horizon case.
LLOG’s permit to drill a new well near BP’s site was approved on April 13 by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees offshore oil and gas drilling operations.
In case of a blowout, the company’s plans involve blowout preventers, containment systems and drilling a relief well to contain a spill – measures that BP relied on to tame its well.
