He spent most of his 12-hour shift in the centre of the rig, welding the transporter platform for the blowout preventer (BOP). The day of 20 April had started like any other for Davis, a 36-year-old native of San Antonio, Texas.
"These cases will be going on for many, many years." He said he was preparing litigation against two other firms who supplied equipment to the rig. "This will be one of the biggest torts probably in the history of the United States," said Anthony Buzbee, a Houston lawyer who is representing Davis and nine other survivors who are seeking $5.5m (£3.7m) each in damages from Transocean and other firms. Seventeen crew members were seriously injured in the incident.įor Barack Obama, whose officials are being held to account for their oversight of offshore drilling in congressional hearings this week, the disaster could be the defining event of his presidency.įor the companies involved in the disaster – BP, the well owner, Transocean, the rig owner, and subcontractors Halliburton and Cameron – that night was only the beginning of what lawyers predict will be one of the longest and most complicated court battles the US has ever seen. He says he and other survivors were to spend the next 40 hours in isolation – barred from phoning their families – while his lawyers believe Transocean, the owners of the rig, readied its legal defences. Once in the current, the oil could travel as far as Mexico or Cuba, Frank Muller-Karger, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, told Congress this week.įor Davis, the events of that night, when the rig exploded killing 11 of the 126 crew, was only the beginning of his ordeal. Heavy patches of crude reached the marshes of Plaquemines, Louisiana this week and the Obama administration admitted the oil had got caught up in the powerful loop current, where it could reach the coral reefs of the Florida Keys. Stephen Davis survivor of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion.
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