Understanding and Properly Interpreting the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Blowout

This chapter serves as an initial orientation to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico deepwater horizon (DWH) oil blowout. It presents background information on past oil spills, and gives a brief summary on the Gulf of Mexico marine ecosystems. The chapter gives an overview of offshore petroleum extraction, before discussing the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill. It lays out the spill paradigm that prevailed prior to the DWH blowout, and proposes a new conceptual model for the fate, transport, and exposure pathways for ecological effects of a marine oil spill that unifies the understanding of historic spills. The chapter also discusses a new oil spill scenario when turbulence of the wellhead release combines with high pressure to result in the production of droplets of oil which remain at depth in the sea. The need for an interdisciplinary marine oil spill oceanography approach is also given in the chapter