All eyes on the Deepwater Horizon

Critical communications in difficult circumstances

The Macondo prospect is an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The Macondo made world news in 2010 due to a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The explosion caused an oil spill that had to be brought under control as quickly as possible to prevent further damage to the ecosystem.

To say that this was a difficult mission is an understatement: action had to be taken immediately, but on the ocean that is not evident. To plug the hole in the oil well, a Blowout Preventer (BOP) had to be installed deep underwater, preventing further leaks.

Several teams and ships were deployed for this purpose, all of which needed good offshore communications and live monitoring to follow up this mission from minute to minute. In addition, reliability was of the utmost importance: if communications completely fail at any point, it has a huge impact on the progress of the mission.