Black Water Rising

摘要

The blowout preventer looks like a five-story fire hydrant. It weighs 325tons and costs $18 million. At the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, it sits on the ocean floor, a mile deep, reachable only by robotic submarines in the murky and freezing currents. By a complex series of valves and gaskets, the massive device is supposed to keep oil and gas from rocketing toward the surface and blowing up the oil rig and its crew of 126, which float on the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River. But the blowout preventer was breaking down.