Smoke billows from the explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010. The explosion killed 11 people, and the resulting oil spill was disastrous. Picture: Derick E. Hingle/Bloomberg Source: Supplied

An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, causing a huge oil spill that flowed for 87 days.

For weeks our screens were filled with images of sea birds coated in oil, brown waves crashing on polluted beaches, and huge boats with giant water cannons dwarfed by the endless plume of black smoke rising from the sea.

Eleven lives were lost in the accident, and countless others were turned upside down in the aftermath. Many communities on the coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Florida will never be the same.

It was America’s worst environmental disaster, one the operator barely recovered from. Five years on, those responsible for letting 4.9 million barrels of oil escape into the sea are at it again. This time, they’re a lot closer to home.

In pristine waters off the Great Australian Bight, BP is hovering over a goldmine. The potential for profit is enormous, but so too is the potential for disaster.

Could disaster happen in Australia? BP says it will never happen again but those who dedicate their lives to protecting the natural environment say safety is impossible to guarantee.

A bird drenched in oil along the Louisiana coast after the spill. Picture: Charlie Riedel Source: AAP

‘ELEVEN MEN DIED. I’LL NEVER FORGET IT’

The human cost of the disaster is the 11 lives lost at sea; the drill workers whose bodies were never recovered.

On top of that was the environmental cost — huge areas of ocean and coastline were affected.

Financially, the company was hit hard. As were countless small businesses that relied on coastal industries.

In total, BP has agreed to pay almost $10 billion to businesses suffering as a result of the spill. It was fined by state, federal and local governments in five states and faces fines in the vicinity of $20 billion.

There are manslaughter charges, too. For those who are suffering, it’s nowhere near enough.

A self-proclaimed shrimp king, Dan Blanchard said in the weeks after the spill that he’d lost $15 million worth of sales in 50 days, the equivalent of $1 million in his pocket.

On top of losing his revenue stream, he lost his motivation for waking up in the morning.

“I think I did everything right, and here this idiot came and didn’t know how to run his business and put me out of my business,” Mr Blanchard told the Guardian in 2010.

“People used to respect me in this town. Now I wake up in the morning and I don’t know what to do.”

His is one of countless stories of heartbreak in America’s south. For their suffering, some were compensated. Others took solace in knowing that the company’s CEO Tony Hayward was ousted and the company’s reputation was permanently tarnished.

Fast forward five years and BP says it is a different company. It says it would “never forget” the tragedy in the gulf and that it had “learned its lessons”.

A pelican struggles to lift its wings under the weight of the oil. Picture: Charlie Riedel Source: AAP

“The Deepwater Horizon accident and the oil spill was a tragedy in every sense,” BP Developments Australia managing director Claire Fitzpatrick said last week.

“Eleven men lost their lives. I’ll never forget that.”

BP wants to drill four wells 250km southwest of Ceduna at a depth of 3km into the seabed. It is not the only company with its sights on the Great Australian Bight. According to Bloomberg, Chevron Corp. won acreage in the region in 2013 and Murphy Oil Corp. and Santos Ltd. also have permits to explore.

BP is expected to soon submit its environmental plan to the independent federal regulator.

Speaking to an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in South Australia, Ms Fitzpatrick said the company had changed its culture and reduced its risks.

Asked whether BP would collapse if there was another catastrophe, Ms Fitzpatrick replied: “My personal view, yes, game over.”

Peter Owen, South Australian director of the Wilderness Society, wants to know who would pay for the clean-up and the compensation in Australia if a disaster did unfold and the company collapsed.

“We don’t need a Gulf of Mexico disaster in the Great Australian Bight,” he said.

“The people of South Australia definitely don’t want BP here, and now BP appears to be saying it won’t be around if it has another disaster.”

The Great Australian Bight is in BP’s sights. Source: News Limited

AUSTRALIA NOT IMMUNE TO A SPILL

Last week marked six years since Australia’s most damaging oil spill. The Montara oil spill in August 2009 dumped 500,000 litres of oil and gas into the ocean off the West Australian coast. It took 74 days for the leak to be capped.

The operator, PTTEP Australasia, took responsibility for the spill but the full count of the cost remains largely unknown. The company says the spill was cleaned up using dispersants but lawyers fighting for compensation say communities bordering the Timor Sea are still suffering.

Last month the Australian Lawyers Alliance released the After the Spill report, detailing over 250 pages of impacts on small, poor communities around Indonesia.

The report documented dead fish and oil sightings as well as skin conditions and food poisoning suffered by locals. It highlighted how seaweed farmers have been affected and how the Australian government, despite clear evidence, failed to hold the responsible parties accountable.

On Tuesday the ALA released a documentary showing for the first time how fishing villages in Indonesia continue to suffer.

A seaweed fisherman told the ALA: “Straight away the seaweed changed and became white”. He said it was “in the sand”. Another said “After softening up, the seaweed immediately turned white then fell apart”. For many, that means they can’t make money.

In 2014 Indonesia requested help from Australia to force the well’s operator to compensate those who suffered. No such help has been forthcoming.

“The Australian government has not, at any stage, required that PTTEP Australasia take any action to ensure that Indonesia was not adversely affected by the spill. Instead, the Australian government has continued to assert that any negotiations must be between the Indonesian government and PTTEP Australasia,” the ALA report said.

Indonesia’s Centre for Energy and Environmental Studies has estimated that the economic loss caused by the Montara spill to the fishing and seaweed industries in NTT amounts to approximately AU$1.5 billion per year since 2009.

The Montara spill is a crisis that continues to plague Indonesians just as the Gulf of Mexico crisis plagues Americans.

Mr Owen said the stakes are even higher in Australia. He said the waters off South Australia are a “haven” for marine life found nowhere else in the world, including humpback, sperm, blue and beak whales, orcas, great white sharks and Australia’s most important sea lion nursery. But he said the waters are also “far more treacherous and remote than the Gulf of Mexico”.

“This is an undeveloped, non-industrialised part of the world, and the risks are high. It’s very deep, very rough and very remote. It’s too important to risk with BP.”

The bodies of 11 workers who died were never recovered. Picture: US Coast Guard. Source: AAP