Timeline of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Coast Guard and other reporting agencies. Price of a barrel of oil (West Texas Intermediate – Cushing, Oklahoma) $84.34 Chris Oynes, offshore drilling director for the MMS, announces a hurried retirement. Timeline of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill The following is a timeline of the "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or the Macondo blowout). It was a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest offshore spill in U.S. history. It was a result of the well blowout that began with the "Deepwater Horizon" drilling
Ixtoc I oil spill 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 down the drill pipe and back up the well bore to