An Economist’s View of the Oil Spill from Inside the White House

Early on the morning of April 21, 2010, a BP official called to alert me that a Gulf of Mexico rig under contract to BP suffered a major blowout, was still on fire, and some of its workers were missing. He asked me to inform White House senior staff about the incident as soon as possible. By the next day (ironically, Earth Day), the Deepwater Horizon sank to the bottom of the Gulf, senior administration officials briefed President Obama in the Oval Office, and, among many tasks, the White House economic team began working to understand and develop measures to mitigate the spill’s economic risks and to identify ways to reduce future oil spill risks.