Deep water, deep trouble
Before a rapt audience in Science Center D on Tuesday night (Feb. 22), two experts in the science of well blowouts told an inside story about the worst oil spill disaster in United States history — starting with the catastrophic fire that engulfed an offshore rig owned by BP, the energy company formerly known as British Petroleum. Eleven men died, and the uncapped wellhead poured 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the equivalent of five Exxon Valdez tankers. The spill cast a web of brown petroleum onto hundreds of square miles of ocean, smothering the spawning grounds for one-half of U.S. fisheries and fouling beaches and wetlands in five states. There’s still a dispute about exactly how much oil spilled, said Cherry A. Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who was the lead speaker. “It will be in litigation for 30 years,” and...