Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010 environmental disaster
Beginning on 20 April 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform caused an oil spill and an environmental disaster off the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico, on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. It is considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8 to 31 percent larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico. The United States federal government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels. After several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on 19 September 2010. Reports in early 2012 indicated that the well site was still leaking. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is regarded as one of the largest environmental disasters in world history.
The public source identifies “Deepwater Horizon oil spill” as 2010 environmental disaster. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Deepwater, Horizon and spill.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 2012.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Deepwater Horizon oil spill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.