Compare where Ixtoc was and where this one is. Compare distances to the US major estuaries.
True on the distances - Ixtoc was in the southern gulf away from our shores and we still got it, obviously to a lesser degree than the nearby Mexican shores. But I was responding to the statement that “Ixtoc wasn’t spilling any thing near what this well is”.
The total barrels into the gulf may be close. And it is more to the point of this has happened before (and elsewhere - one in Australia) and the ocean floor didn’t collapse, there weren’t tsunamis, they didn’t spew oil until the “oil cavern” was dry, etc.
And it is obviously an environmental disaster (and don’t forget the 11 lives lost, the economic cost, and probably longer-lasting political cost).
Here’s a link with some comments on the environmental issues observed from the Ixtoc spill. Both nearby the well (Mexico) and far (Texas):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/01/gulf-oil-spill-ixtoc-ecological-tipping-point
Excerpt:
But although Ixtoc was a big disaster, it did not develop into the long-term catastrophe that scientists initially thought was inevitable.
“This is not to say there were no consequences. Just that the evidence is that these are not as dramatic as we feared,” says Luis Soto, a marine biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “After about two years the recuperation was well on the way.”
Wes Tunnell, now at the Texas Harte Research Institute, took samples before and after the oil arrived in Texas that showed an immediate 80% drop in the number of organisms living between the grains of sand that provide food for shore birds and crabs.
“Sampling a couple of years after the spill indicated the populations were back to normal,” he says. Six years after Ixtoc 1 exploded it was hard to find any evidence of the oil, he says. “It is rather baffling to us all. We don’t really know where it went.”