The Deepwater Horizon catastrophe of 2010 was partly a consequence of pushing deep drilling to its limits in an effort to open new territories. On 20 April that year, forty-one miles off the southeast coast of Louisiana, the borehole of a semi-submersible oil rig burst. The ensuing blowout at rig-level killed eleven crewmen and ignited a fireball that could be seen onshore. Two days later the rig sank, leaving the well gushing from the seabed at a water depth of around 5,000 feet. Two hundred and ten million gallons of oil escaped into the Gulf of Mexico, rising on the ocean as a slick that
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