![]() ![]() ![]() Before plummeting demand from the coronavirus pandemic drove already-low oil prices lower, the Gulf of Mexico was producing as much crude oil as it had in years. Pipelines-26,000 miles of them-connect wells to the processing infrastructure that lines the coast. “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” Can this kind of spill happen again?Ībout 17 percent of the U.S.’s total crude oil production comes from offshore projects in the Gulf. ![]() “We’re just to the point now where we have enough data to recognize things we missed earlier, and there’s still a lot we don’t know,” says Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia. “So basically we’re back to where we were in 2010, in terms of regulatory environment.”Īnd in some ways, more is known now than ever before about the Gulf and how the spill affected its ecosystems. “It took the better part of six to seven years to get in place the inspection of blowout preventers and rules about making drilling plans safer and putting commonsense regulations in place, but those have been rescinded,” says Ian MacDonald, a scientist at Florida State University. But 10 years and billions of dollars in cleanup efforts later, many of the same risks that allowed the disaster to occur remain. The spill opened many people’s eyes to the risks of drilling for oil in one of the most ecologically rich, culturally important, and economically valuable parts of the world. ![]()
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