No Bottom

At 9:50 p.m. on April 20, 2010, gas from the Macondo oil well reached the surface of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico and exploded. Eleven men were killed. The rig burned for 36 hours and sank. For the next 87 days, approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil - 210 million gallons - poured into the Gulf of Mexico.

The largest accidental marine oil spill in history.

No Bottom tells the complete story of the Deepwater Horizon disaster: the decisions that caused it, the men who died, the 87-day struggle to stop the flow, and the reckoning that followed.

The Rig and the Well - The Deepwater Horizon was among the most sophisticated offshore drilling rigs in the world, leased to BP at $500,000 per day. The Macondo well was named after the doomed fictional town in García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The name proved prophetic.

The Decisions - The well was six weeks behind schedule and $58 million over budget. BP made a series of decisions that reduced costs and increased risks: a cheaper but riskier well design, fewer centralizers than the cementing contractor recommended, no bottoms-up cement circulation. Halliburton had internal test results showing the cement blend was unstable. They proceeded anyway. Nobody told BP.

The Explosion - Multiple warning signs appeared in the two hours before the explosion. Nobody invoked the stop-work authority that every person on the rig technically had. At 9:50 p.m., the gas reached a diesel generator. The blowout preventer that was supposed to be the last line of defense failed - because the drill pipe had buckled inside the wellbore, and the shear rams punctured it instead of cutting it.

87 Days - BP told the world the flow was 1,000 barrels per day. It peaked at more than 60,000. A containment dome failed when methane hydrates clogged it. A "top kill" failed. A "junk shot" failed. A live feed of oil billowing from the broken wellhead was broadcast continuously for months. 1,300 miles of coastline were affected.

The Reckoning - BP ultimately paid more than $65 billion. The $18.7 billion 2015 settlement with the federal government and Gulf Coast states was the largest corporate settlement in American history. BP pleaded guilty to 11 counts of felony manslaughter. No individual went to prison.

The eleven men who died are remembered in a memorial in New Orleans. They were workers doing their jobs. They deserved better.

No Bottom is Book 7 of the American Disasters series.