Kirsty Wark brings together well control experts, US Coast Guard Officials and environmentalists who fought to contain a massive off-shore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered a catastrophic blowout and exploded in April 2010.

For the next 87 days, BP engineers tried to staunch the flow of crude oil gushing out of the well on the ocean floor. An estimated 184 million gallons were spilt, 18 times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez, making it the largest accidental marine oil spill in the world, and the largest environmental disaster in US history.

As oil coated more than 1,000 miles of coastline in six US states, Americans grew more and more angry. A group calling itself “Seize BP” held demonstrations in 50 US cities, calling for the company to be stripped of its assets. BP’s CEO Tony Hayward was told by an angry US Congressional panel that his company had shown a reckless lack of attention to safety. After the company’s share price plummeted and 12 billion pounds was wiped off its value in a single day, Tony Hayward was forced to resign.

The programme includes: Mark Mazzella, BP’s resident well-control expert, who fought on and off-shore to stop the oil flowing before finally capping it; Admiral Thad Allen, National Incident Commander, who was in charge of the federal response; PJ Hahn, then Director of coastal zone management for Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, which was on the front line of the oil spill; Keith Jones, whose son Gordon worked on the Deepwater Horizon rig and was killed in the accident; and Bob Kaluza one of two BP supervisors on the rig that night.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Emily Williams
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4 Show less