I just read a comment about that on the Oil Drum live thread:
Found out much more about IXTOC disaster. It went on for almost a year and spewed this amount that damaged the Gulf and Texas coasts. They were finally able to cap it. I don’t even remember it being on the news!
IXTOC
On June 3, 1979, the 2 mile deep exploratory well, IXTOC I, blew out in the Bahia de Campeche, 600 miles south of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico The IXTOC I well continued to spill oil at a rate of 10,000 - 30,000 barrels per day until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6516#comment-631410
1979? Wow, I was really off; I thought I was younger when it happened. But now I know why I heard about it. I was working at a very large engineering and energy construction company at the time; so it had to have been there I heard the engineers discussing it. Heck, maybe some of them were loaned out to help fix it.
Ixtoc was in 50 feet of water. This is under 5000 feet. It’s different:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/excerptfrom2003report.pdf