Oil From the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Disaster Continues to Spread in Disturbing Ways Share Platform supply vessels attending to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Image: U.S. Coast Guard) An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010. New research chronicles the fate of the oil that wasn’t cleaned up. The Deepwater Horizon platform was stationed at the BP-operated Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico when disaster struck. On April 20, 2010, a wellhead blowout caused the drilling rig to explode, resulting in the deaths of 11 workers and leaving another 17 injured. The platform, located 64 kilometres from the Louisiana coast, sank two days later and fell 1,500 metres to the seafloor. Crews managed to seal the well on August 4, 2010, but not before 4.9 million barrels of crude oil poured out, creating the largest spill in U.S. history.