We first posted this in May. The movie is set to release.
Deepwater Horizon MOVIE Review – comment below
“Deepwater Horizon” is a film being released in September 2016 inspired by the events of the massive oil disaster which happened in 2010. A BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on the evening of April 20th, 2010. Eleven people lost their lives, and the rig burned for 36 hours before it sank, also resulting in about 210 million gallons of pollution spreading into the Gulf. This environmental disaster was the biggest in U.S. history, and the biggest accidental marine oil spill in the world.
The filming of “Deepwater Horizon” completed in August 2015, and has a quality cast, lead by Mark Wahlberg, and includes Kate Hudson, Kurt Russell, and John Malkovitch. The director, Peter Berg, is also known for “Lone Survivor”, “Battleship”, and “Hancock”.
The huge numbers of people affected by the oil spill will be hoping that the heroic tone of this film does not result in making it a PR vehicle for BP. Many people will be fascinated to see how this disaster happened, and how BP failed to do their job properly. This year, the company was ordered to pay up to $8.8 billion for restoration of natural resources. The civil claims settlement was reached in 2015, and amounts to $18.7 billion.
As residents of Walton County, we are all too familiar with the Fienberg “settlements” – if you claimed early, mostly as an individual, you likley received more, and faster money than the businesses that may have hired you. Businesses were constantly stalled for “more paperwork” in order to “flip” the payout percentages from 80-20 May-July to 20-80 August 2010 onwards. The convenant not to sue was a big contention which has and will be continually challenged as unconstitutional.
What we do know is BO set aside 8 billion of insurance dollars and Feinberg was there to lessen the payout, in other words represent the insurance company, while publically claiming to represent those “injured” by the spill.
Not big news but 90,000 gallons of oil just spilled from a Shell platform recently. Shell claim it is capped and cleanup underway.
What we know for sure is, the oil didnt have to make it to Walton, Okaloosa, Bay and Gulf counties for the economic disater of tourism deficit to occur. Even the President “swimming” in the Gulf did little to stave off years of downturn in an already weak economy.
What this film does to BP’s image is hard to judge at this time (May 2016), as we have very little to go on. The official trailer says this is “Inspired by the true story of real heroes”, and the press release says this is “Based on the true events…”. In any case, “Deepwater Horizon” is already being referred to as a “disaster movie”, so having that permanently linked with BP is not going to do them any favors.
We have few details about the plot of the film, and how closely it follows the real events. The screenplay, by Matthew Sand, is actually based on a “New York Times” article, which was written by David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul. There appear to have been several problems or faults which combined to create this disaster. The cement, which failed to create an adequate seal, then got into the riser, allowing hydrocarbons to get up to the rig platform. The fact that the fluid flow was not monitored correctly meant no-one realised that this was happening. Then gas within the hydrocarbons was ignited on the platform, causing fires and power failure. Loss of power meant the rig could not maintain position and had to detach from the well head, which meant activating the “blowout preventer” (BOP). The fire and explosions were bad enough, but then the failure of the BOP meant a massive oil spill could not be stopped. The blowout preventer, as its name suggests, is designed to seal the well in an emergency; but it this case it did not close fully, and allowed the oil and gas to continue streaming out of the well.
It seems that many problems came together in a short space of time to produce this disaster, and management were there to witness it. There were several executives on board from Transocean and BP, and ironically part of their job was to congratulate senior staff on the rig for 7 years of operation without serious down-time. BP, Transocean, and other companies have been forced to pay huge amounts of compensation, and suffered massively in terms of their PR. But it does seem that some good may have eventually resulted from the oil spill; tourism in many areas has increased since before the spill, due to the investment in cleanup and other improvements.
There have been many documentaries and videos about what happened to the Deepwater Horizon rig on that day in June 2010, but most of these are about facts, technicalities, and apportioning blame. I think the trailer of the feature film shows that it will concentrate on the human stories, and the heroes involved, whilst no doubt casting doubts on the way the rig was being managed. Hopefully, they might have followed the example of “Apollo 13”, and produced great film about the heroes and their families, and not about who was to blame. We should hope that “Deepwater Horizon” will be a fitting tribute to the many thousands whose livelihoods were affected, but especially to the friends and families of those who were killed and injured.
Source Material https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill http://30a.tv/videos/1146/hay-bales-precaution-against-oil-spill http://www.bp.com/en_us/bp-us/commitment-to-the-gulf-of-mexico/deepwater-horizon-accident.htmlThe ‘Deepwater Horizon’ Movie is Deeply Problematichttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt1860357/ http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spills/significant-incidents/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill http://www.deepwaterhorizoneconomicsettlement.com/ http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/05/5_years_after_oil_spill_bp_cre.html
