Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig leased to BP between 2001 and 2013. On April 20 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana, an uncontrollable blowout caused an explosion on the rig that killed 11 crew members and ignited a fireball visible 64km away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, the Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest oil spill in US waters yet. The names of the dead crew members are forgotten, but not that of Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP. I was reminded of Hayward as I read Eskom's answering affidavit filed in the high court this week. When the oil leak started, Hayward initially downplayed it, stating a month later that the environmental impact was likely to be "very, very modest" and that the spill was "relatively tiny" in comparison with the size of the ocean. Two weeks later, Hayward changed his assessment, calling th...
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