When Vidrine describes the "bladder effect" to explain the bad result of first test on the well, parts of the drawing on the white-board disappears at changes of camera angle.
The Damon Bankston supply ship is missing from multiple wide shots of DWH.
After the bird strike on the helicopter, the pilot mentions that a safety check will be needed upon landing. That check didn't happen.
When Mike Williams and Mr. Jimmy are walking out of the helicopter terminal to the helicopter pads there is a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter parked right outside the terminal with registration number - N492BG. They walk past this helicopter and far beyond it passing numerous helicopters despite the fact that the helicopter they fly to the rig on is N492BG; the first helicopter they passed.
Survival courses attended by oil rig staff every so often teach a special technique for jumping into the water. The life jacket should not be worn, but held in hand. This is to stabilize the body during the fall and to avoid being decapitated upon entering the water at great speed. The life jacket floats near the point of impact, and the jumper will normally emerge close enough to it to don it inside the water.
Halliburton was the company responsible for cementing, not Schlumberger. The Schlumberger crew had different responsibilities on this well.
Just before the onset of the blowout, visiting BP staff are seen wandering around the derrick floor in their smart shirts. Ths is a major breach of safety rules. No one ever steps on a derrick floor without protective equipment. Similarly, Andrea should have permanently donned a coverall. And Mr Jim would normally, before anything else, don his coveralls upon disembarking from the helicopter.
Contrary to popular belief, oil is not made from dinosaurs. Hydrocarbons like oil and gas were created from various forms of biomass, and not from dinosaurs. Hence you would not have dinosaur teeth appear on the surface while drilling in an oil reservoir. While dinosaur fossils have been found when retrieving rock cores to investigate the subsurface, this is pure luck, and unrelated to the presence of an oilfield nearby. Any such fossils would be crushed by the drill-bit during normal drilling operations, like the one depicted in this movie.
When the Emergency Disconnect Sequence is attempted from the bridge, closing the BOP shear rams to cut the drill pipe and disconnecting the Riser from the BOP, the crew check the blown out well for any change in the fire or flow intensity for an indication of positive outcome of the BOP closure and successful disconnect. Given that the BOP is at the seabed, and the Riser and the drill pipe above the cut and disconnection are full of hydrocarbons up to the surface, it would have taken hours for the blow-out and fire to subside. Therefore, in such a situation, you activate your emergency shut down, and you leave the vessel as fast as possible, hoping for the best.
While a door hitting a man hard enough to knock him across a room might break bones and give him a concussion, this actually happened to Mike Williams not once, but twice, even though the movie only showed him getting struck by the door once. In his statement he described how he actually got angry at these "three inch thick, steel, fire-rated doors with six stainless steel hinges supporting 'em on the frame" because instead of protecting him, they were hurting him.
Mike pushes Andrea off the rig and jumps after her 11 seconds later. However, Mike comes up first, having spent 27 seconds between the jump and surfacing. The same trip takes 49 seconds for Andrea, who surfaces only after Mike. Both are wearing life jackets, to be of any use probably in 150N category or higher, making it impossible to spend the missing 22 seconds under water.
Numerous oil rig workers are not wearing their ear plugs properly. Such personnel would know how. Actors not so much.
On board the helicopter, before takeoff, Jimmy Harrell is reading some documents. You can read, in bold capital letters, «WEATER REPORT».
The Skype-based staring contest is a bit odd. In order to stare at someone in this way you must stare at the camera and not the screen, and the same goes for them. At no point are they actually looking at each other's eyes. One must have excellent peripheral vision to know if the other person blinks.
The dinosaur "tooth" looks eerily similar to the raptor claw shown in Jurassic Park.
The keyboard on the desk at Ensign's desk features the Windows 8 logo, which was released in 2012, two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Mike and Felicia's vehicle is seen driving on the Gateway to the Gulf Expressway bridge between Leesville and Port Fourchon. While phase one of this bridge opened in 2009, the vehicle is seen driving on phase two, which did not open until December 2011, more than a year and a half after the Deepwater Horizon exploded.
When Mike Williams's daughter's soda ruptures, the equipment generating the pressure can be seen underneath the kitchen table.
Camera shadows visible on the actors during the evacuation.
The word Mississippi is misspelled on the graphics of a news report aired on TV which Felicia Williams watches.
At 13 minutes in, when Mr. Jimmy is in the helicopter on his way to the rig, he is seen reading a weather report. As the camera pans onto the report, the heading on it is misspelled "Weater Report".