After BP’s infamous oil spill, the oil company has taken precautions to fix the systematic flaws in their wells. BP paid $4.7 billion out to almost 200,000 claimants for damages in the first year following the spill.
It was on this day, July 15th, in 2010 that the leak from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was finally capped after almost three months.
In that three-month period, about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico, which made this leak the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. The spill continually made national news due to immense damage to marine and wildlife habitats and the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries.