Gulf of Mexico 1979, the "Ixtoc I" oil platform in the Bay of Campeche suffered a blowout leading to a catastrophic explosion, which resulted in a massive oil spill that continued for nine months before the well was finally capped. This was ranked as the largest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico until the "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill in 2010. On April 20, 2010, the "Deepwater Horizon" oil platform, located in the Mississippi Canyon about off the Louisiana coast, suffered a catastrophic explosion; it sank a day-and-a-half later. It was in the process of being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment, to
Gulf of Mexico basin Mexico which penetrated the Late-Triassic and Early-Jurassic strata, filling the extensional graben features. The Gulf of Mexico basin red beds are specifically named the Eagle Mills formation, located directly beneath the salt, evaporite and marine sediments deposited during the Jurassic, and often found with the diabase dikes and basalt flows mentioned above. Basement rocks in the northeastern region of the Gulf of Mexico basin are fragments of the African plate which remained behind during the breakup of Pangaea and date back to the late Precambrian through the Cambrian. It is atop these Precambrian plate fragments that the mainly carbonate and