How an all-star team put an end to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Underwater cameras showed the escaping oil in graphic detail.

Oceaneeering

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20, 2010, 11 workers tragically lost their lives and the Macondo well began gushing crude oil—and it would continue to do so for nearly three months. A parade of attempts to shut down the flow taught the public just how difficult it was to tame a wild well 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the sea.

The various techniques had oddly colloquial names considering the engineering feats they represented— names like “top hat," “top kill," and “junk shot." One by one, they failed to do the job. Then, on July 15, a new cap was placed over the top of the damaged wellhead under the direction of the US government—and it held. That was the end of the 24/7 camera footage showing black billows of oil rocketing upward.

While that description may make it sound like a simple operation, it was anything but. A mad scramble and some gutsy decisions were going on behind the scenes. The story of the science and engineering that drove that success was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.