VoteVets.org Republicans, 25 percent Independents, and 20 percent Democrats. In May 2010, VoteVets launched an ad campaign in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The massive $1.5 million television and web ad campaign was the first to make the connection between the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and American national security. The ad campaign features a veteran who served with the Louisiana National Guard, cleaning up the massive spill, speaking from a polluted shoreline of Louisiana. In the ad, Louisiana resident and veteran Evan Wolf makes the point that the necessity of using the Guard to help
Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico (United States) blowout) began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. Killing eleven people, it is considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8% to 31% larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill. In 2012, federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico produced of oil, which made up 19.5% of all U.S. oil production that year, and more than that of any U.S. state other than Texas. The 2012 production was less than the in 2009; however, due to new