Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico (United States) and part of offshore Alabama, since 1995. In March 2010, President Barack Obama announced plans to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, in federal waters greater than from the coasts of Alabama and Florida. In December 2010, following the "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill, the Obama administration reversed its plans to open the eastern Gulf, and imposed a moratorium on new drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least seven years. The "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo
Ixtoc I oil spill or littoral communities, which were not the subject of this study. Ixtoc I oil spill Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible drilling rig "Sedco 135" in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters deep. On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout resulting in one of the largest oil spills in history. Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) was drilling a deep oil well when the drilling rig "Sedco 135" lost drilling mud circulation. In modern rotary drilling, mud is circulated