Political Quotes

“Madam President, it is 5 in the afternoon. Exactly 5 years ago, at 5 p.m., the crew of the Deepwater Horizon mobile oil drilling unit began what is called a negative pressure test of the Macondo prospect oil formation. A cascade of menacing events followed the first failed test. At around 9:40 that evening, drilling mud began gushing out onto the rig. The well had kicked. The crew activated the rig's blowout preventer 1 mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, down at the bottom of the gulf. Tragically, the blowout preventer failed. At 9:49 p.m., there was an explosion on the rig floor. The Deepwater Horizon rig quickly became an inferno. Eleven men died. Eleven families were changed forever. As morning came the next day, an oil sheen 2 miles long and a half mile wide shone on the surface of the waters of the gulf as the blaze on the rig continued. Those images are seared into our collective mind's eyes. So the owner of the well, BP, and the owner and operator of the rig, Transocean, tried and failed again to close the blowout preventer that evening. Then days later, on Earth Day, April 22, at 10:22 a.m., the rig on the surface of the gulf sank. If we can remember, we were first told the sheen that was 2 miles long and a half mile wide came from the drums of diesel onboard the rig. Then later, a revision was made that 1,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking from the well a mile below the surface of the gulf.…”