In this unit, we are going

to introduce the case of a major environmental disaster linked to drilling a well

in the deep offshore, in this case, in
the Gulf of Mexico in waters belonging
to the United States. The well was called Macondo, and mistakes were made
in drilling this well, and there was a blowout and the drilling rig that was
drilling this well went up fire. There was loss of life, 11 people were killed and
the oil well was left unattended on out of control and spewed oil into
the water for many days. Why is this important? It's important because we
must remember that drilling a well always has certain risks. Oil is contained in
the ground, it may be in benign formations. Sometimes you know
you drill a well, you find oil that is under pressure but
not too much pressure, that is heated but not too hot, that does not contain too
much other noxious components especially we fear about sulfur because when there
is a lot of sulfur H2S, the danger is that
the sulfur will escape. This is a gas and it is lethal for all
the people around it. So drilling a well
is something that has to be done with great care, and there is a complex technology
consisting in drilling
different sections of the well, each section is
then cemented so as to make sure that there is
no contact between the well, the hole in the surrounding rock until you reach the
place, the level, where
oil is contained. There you control an opening, you control the degree to which the
well is put in contact with the surrounding
rock so that you can control the flow
of oil into the well. All of this has to
be done carefully, and with a lot of know-how, it's a very delicate operation. If
it is done carefully, then, normally it does not lead to
any negative consequences. But sometimes things
can go wrong, we are humans and as we're
humans we make mistakes. We may have very good instruments but sometimes we misread
them, we don't understand what
they are telling us. This is what happened in Macondo, the people did not realize
that their
interpretation of what they were reading was wrong and they only realized
when it was too late. So it's important to keep
in mind that there are such risks and that
damage can always happen.