Sixteen years ago today, the Deepwater Horizon Macondo well was successfully capped, bringing the end to nearly three months of continuous oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
Polaris’ own Elliott Taylor was on the ground as a SCAT Coordinator for the Eastern States (MS, AL, FL) during the response. He remembers one afternoon in the Command Post surrounded by monitors streaming live feeds of the wellhead, when a sudden cheer erupted across the room. His first thought: the well is capped! Turns out it was the 2010 World Cup and team USA had just scored. Back to work. The real celebration came on July 15th, 2010 when engineers used remotely operated vehicles to bolt a heavy capping stack over the leaking blowout preventer, successfully stopping the flow of oil.
That mix of intensity and humanity defined the response. Coordinating SCAT efforts across ICPs in both Mobile and Houma meant constant communication and long days (and nights) to keep field teams aligned on a consistent approach, no matter their location.
One of the response’s biggest technical challenges was reoiling. The well capping stopped the source, but it didn’t stop the oil already in the environment. Unlike most spills where shoreline oiling is a one-time event, Deepwater Horizon brought repeated reoiling for months afterward, much of it coming from offshore mats breaking apart and buried oil that kept resurfacing on shorelines long after the celebrations had faded.
Polaris’ Greg Challenger helped pioneer the Snorkel SCAT program to tackle the issue of nearshore buried oil. Shoreline teams got remarkably skilled at spotting blocky tar balls on the beach that were a sign of an offshore mat breaking apart. The snorkel SCAT team would be sent to locate the mat, and once they were found, long-reach track hoes were used to recover them.
Sixteen years later, the experience gained during Deepwater Horizon continues to inform oil spill response around the world. We’re proud that members of the Polaris team contributed to that effort and continue to apply those lessons in the field today.
To everyone who worked on the Deepwater Horizon response: thank you for your contributions. If you were there, we’d love to hear your story. What do you remember most about that day?