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NCSE Remembers Gulf Oil Disaster: Two Year Anniversary

Published Apr 20, 2012 3:23 PM by The Maritime Executive

Two years ago today, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform killed 11 men and initiated the largest marine oil spill in history, with roughly five million barrels released from the Macondo well, with roughly 4.2 million barrels pouring into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

To provide factual information and curricular resources about this disaster, the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) and our Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) have created the Online Clearinghouse for Education And Networking: Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL) a free, open-access, peer-reviewed electronic education resource about the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

OCEAN-OIL resources now available at www.EoEarth.org/oceanoil include:

  • National Commission Reports on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill- all of the 30 official reports and many background papers
  • Articles (160+)  hyper-linked, encyclopedia style
  • Teaching resources (30) including games and teacher guides
  • Glossary (400+) related to oil spill causes, impacts, clean-up, and prevention
  • Acronyms (LPG,  PPM,  ROV,  VOC) (75+) to help decode the language of oil spill science
  • External links (100+) to  government sites, image galleries, news sources, industry, environmental groups, education, and journal articles
  • Photo galleries: Images by renowned photojournalist Gary Braasch and others
  • Deepwater Horizon by the Numbers: Publication-quality graphs
  • Videos (280+)
  • Databases - Statistics, technical diagrams, maps, and other data

The OCEAN-OIL website is seamlessly integrated into the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org), which is a free, peer-reviewed, searchable collection of content about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society, written by expert scholars and educators. The site is designed to be a resource to faculty members and other educators who may use the incident in their teaching.

The project is a partnership among NCSE, CEDD, Louisiana State University and Boston University. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation.