ABSTRACT
The search for new supplies of petroleum and natural gas inevitably led to increased interest in offshore wells a little before the start of the twentieth century, which also set off controversies about potential spills and blowouts. Until recently, the most devastating marine oil spill in the Western Hemisphere occurred between June 1979 and March 1980 at the site of the Ixtoc 1 experimental well in the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico. By most accounts, the Ixtoc 1 oil spill ranked globally as the second or third worst oil spill of all time. While hurricanes or cyclones may be the most dramatic and destructive events associated with water, marine oil spills produce their own misfortunes. In the late 1990s, production in deepwater surpassed that in shallow water for the first time. In 2010, a blowout of BP's Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico became the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.
