User:Amalialoveseggdog/Deepwater drilling

Evaluating "Deepwater Drilling" Article
While reading the introduction there are a lot of inconsistencies in information that is being given. There is lots of vague references to facts that don't give description of the time. For example, "There are approximately 3400 deepwater wells[when?] in the Gulf of Mexico with depths greater than 150 meters."[full citation needed] The article is also very unorganized and hard to follow along with. In the beginning of the article it is talking about how many deepwater wells there are and how far they drill down. It then moves onto the companies that are investing in deepwater drilling. There is not a smooth flow to the information that is being given. There is a big chunk of the introduction that is a really long quote that could be cut down more. In the beginning of the article there is a banner that lists several of the issues in the article. While looking at the Talk page it states that the article is "clearly highly distorted towards the POV of the pro-drilling camp...furthermore, the article lacks any reference to countries besides the USA." Most of the article is focused on the types of deepwater drilling facilities. There is a paragraph about the 2010 oil spill but there is no more detail on the negative affects of oil drilling. Glancing at the references none are current or from the last couple years. Some of the reference links go to pages that cannot be found. Overall the article is missing key information on deepwater drilling and needs lots of improvement.

Deepwater Drilling Process
The first step of deepwater drilling is identifying potential oil and natural gas reservoirs beneath the seafloor by using seismic technology. In order to get access to oil the drill will need to go 9,000 feet below sea level where it will be directly above the oil and natural gas reservoir. There are three types of vessels in deepwater drilling: a drillship, a semisubmersible vessel, or a floating production platform. All rigs have a Blow Out Preventer stack and a pumping system to circulate fluids in and out of well while drilling.

Harmful Affects of Deepwater Drilling
Deepwater Drilling has serious harmful impacts on the aquatic life in the oceans which in turn affects human health and activity. Oil spills are the biggest disasters and reach long distances, harm animal and plant habitats, and harm places where people live, work, and vacation. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico and is seen as the worst environmental disaster in the United States. The spill released about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the environment.

The biggest impacts in the Horizon oil spill was the harm to marine life. Eight U.S. national parks were threatened and more than 400 of the species that live in the Gulf islands and the marshlands were at risk of becoming endangered. In 2012 people started to see large amounts of mutated fish in the Gulf due to the dispersants and chemicals that were used to clean up the oil spill. Some of the deformities included fish without eyes, oozing sores, and lesions. The oil spill affected the coastline itself, between 622 and 1300 miles of the U.S. coastline around the Gulf of Mexico had land eroded and most of the vegetation dead. The sand when tested showed that the variety of organisms had dropped severely. This could have long lasting affects on the ecosystem.