On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and unleashing one of the largest marine oil spills in history. For nearly three months, millions of barrels of crude poured from BP's Macondo well into the waters off Louisiana. The rig was owned by Transocean and its well had been cemented by Halliburton, and investigations found that the disaster grew out of cost-cutting, ignored warnings, and a drilling culture that put profit ahead of the lives of the workers on board.

The spill poisoned fisheries, wetlands, and coastlines across the Gulf, devastating Black, Vietnamese, Indigenous, and working-class fishing communities whose livelihoods depended on those waters. Cleanup crews were exposed to oil and to chemical dispersants such as Corexit, sprayed in enormous quantities to break up the oil before it reached shore, and many reported lasting illness. BP eventually paid billions in fines and settlements, the largest environmental penalty in US history, while continuing to post profits. 

The company's history reaches back further than the Gulf. BP began as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and when Iran's elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized its oil in 1951, Britain and the United States answered with the 1953 coup that overthrew him. Deepwater Horizon belongs to that same history of extraction, in which oil corporations and the states that serve them treat land, water, and people, from the Gulf Coast to the Niger Delta, as acceptable sacrifices. Remembering the disaster means honoring the workers who died and the communities who still live with its damage, and committing to a future in which the earth and its people are no longer offered up for profit.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
• printed on acid-free, premium photo paper

• paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

*frame not included*