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Throwing Precaution To The Wind: Nepa And The Deepwater Horizon Blowoutthrowing Precaution To The Wind: Nepa And The Deepwater Horizon Blowout, Robert L. Glicksman, Sandra Zellmer, Joel Mintz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform blew up. Eleven workers were killed in the explosion. When the platform sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico two days later, oil erupted out of the riser - a 5,000-foot pipe connecting the platform to the well on the ocean floor. After a number of failed attempts to stop the leak, BP eventually capped the well in July, three months after the explosion. Nearly 5,000,000 barrels of oil were released into the Gulf, making the Deepwater Horizon the largest offshore oil spill in world history. In this paper, …