Book Description

The April 20, 2010, oil spill that followed the explosion of the Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit, Deepwater Horizon, was the largest in U.S. history. It was also the first Spill of National Significance -- so complex that it required extraordinary coordination of Federal, State, local, and responsible party resources to contain and clean up the discharge. As the lead Federal agency for oil spill or hazardous material incidents in U.S. coastal waters, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) served as the Federal On-Scene Coordinator for response to this oil spill. Seven after action reports containing 549 recommendations were issued in the wake of this incident. This report attempted to determine whether the USCG had implemented Deepwater Horizon after action report recommendations. However, due to inconsistencies in the USCG's process to track progress, this report sought to understand how the USCG tracked after action report recommendations and why the USCG had difficulty in providing supporting documentation for the recommendations it said were completed. The USCG did not provide effective oversight of recommendations made to it in Deepwater Horizon after action reports, nor could it provide reasonable assurance that corrective actions for the Deepwater Horizon incident addressed the recommendations in these after action reports. This may have affected the response to the oil spill and could affect the USCG's response to future disasters. Table and figure. This is a print on demand report.