ABC - Foreign Correspondent - In Deep Water (Gulf Oil Disaster) (2010)

Information

In Deep Water

Broadcast: 29/06/2010

Reporter: Hilary Andersson (BBC Panorama)

The bright, cheery, clean and green logo of petroleum behemoth BP couldn’t be further from the image in the minds of gulf coast Americans who now view the company as a demon polluter that has devastated their lives, their livelihoods and their environment.

Many more around the world are appalled as the ‘impact’ assessed early on by BP boss Tony Hayward as "likely modest" builds and builds into what may well become the worst man-made environmental catastrophe.

On Foreign Correspondent, the men who escaped with their lives relive the hours up to and beyond the explosion that tipped the Deepwater Horizon rig into the depths of the gulf and took eleven lives with it.

“It was a crematory, like an oven. (I thought) I’m gonna die here. I’ll never forget the sound, the feel the taste – horrid, horrid.“
Steve Davis, Deepwater Horizon welder

But that was just the beginning.

Since then an open wound on the ocean floor has belched millions upon millions of barrels of crude.
Some of that oil has surfaced as ugly and suffocating slicks but below there are huge and hidden black monsters. Some scientists have estimated one submerged slick lurking nearby as "12 miles long and 600 feet deep".

In this powerful program from BBC’s Panorama, Hilary Andersson meets the rig workers stunned and deeply scarred by the failure of Deepwater Horizon. Some of those workers reveal hitherto unknown detail about faulty procedures and systems and penny pinching they claim led to the disaster.

US President Barack Obama wants to find out “whose ass to kick” over this disaster and he’s not alone.

“We’re in the fight of our life. This is worse than ten Katrinas.“ Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish Louisiana

BP’s beleaguered executive Tony Hayward may well wonder when he’ll "get his life back" but many more are wondering is the very life of the northern gulf and the coastal communities it sustains may be dead in the water.