English: contextual overview of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill recovery area showing both sea surface and subsea. Scale has been altered for clarity, and only the main equipment is shown.

At the centre is a subsea blowout preventer stack installed on the seabed with a riser insertion tube in place to its left and kill and choke lines connected to a top kill mud manifold to its right. Relief wells 1 and 2 are shown at the extreme right and left, each drilling down to meet the blown centre well.

Legend, referring also to this annotated diagram:

• red represents the blowout preventer stack
• grey represents the oil flow passage, see 15, 9 and 8
• white tubing represents the kill (left, 10) and choke (right, 11) lines
• brown represents the top of the subsea well casing, above 15
• the five grey rectangles within the lower red shape represent ram-type blowout preventers
• the two grey rectangles within the upper red shape represent annular-type blowout preventers
• the orange pipes are flexible hoses connected to various rigid pipes, above 10, 12 and 13

Key, referring to this annotated diagram:

• 1 = Relief Well 2 Development Driller II
• 2 = Discoverer Enterprise
• 3 = Kill mud ships
• 4 = Top Kill Helix Q4000
• 5 = Relief Well 1 Development Driller III
• 6 = Mud pumped down by Helix Q4000
• 7 = Relief Well 2 being drilled by Development Driller II
• 8 = Riser Insertion Tube riser to sea surface
• 9 = broken riser from top of blowout preventer (BOP)
• 10 = Kill line into BOP
• 11 = Choke line into BOP
• 12 = Manifold for kill mud
• 13 = Flexible hose interconnecting the mud pipes and manifold
• 14 = Subsea Dispersion Injection System at end of broken riser
• 15 = Oil well head