RESTORE Act Gulf Coast. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig located in the Gulf of Mexico that was owned by Transocean and drilling for British Petroleum (BP) exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 16. The rig burned for over a day before it sunk into the gulf on April 22, 2010. Following the explosion, the seafloor oil gusher flowed for 87 days, spilling an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf. The spill resulted in widespread damage to the environment and ecology of the gulf coast states, as well as subsequent economic damage to their tourism
Deepwater Horizon oil spill 318,000 Louisiana residents (17% of all jobs in the state). NOAA had closed , or approximately 36% of Federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, for commercial fishing causing $2.5 billion cost for the fishing industry. The U.S. Travel Association estimated that the economic impact of the oil spill on tourism across the Gulf Coast over a three-year period could exceed approximately $23 billion, in a region that supports over 400,000 travel industry jobs generating $34 billion in revenue annually. On 30 April 2010, President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to hold the issuing of new offshore drilling leases