The Macondo well that caused the 2010 oil spill had a total depth of 18,360 feet.
Macondo was an exploratory well in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, about 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. BP operated the prospect, while Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig drilled the well in roughly 5,000 feet of water.
The well was intended to reach 19,650 feet, but drilling stopped at an actual total depth of 18,360 feet. On April 20, 2010, high-pressure hydrocarbons entered the well system, triggering explosions and a fire aboard the rig. Eleven workers died, and the rig later sank.
A common mix-up is confusing the well’s depth with the water depth. The 18,360-foot figure describes the well’s total drilled depth, while the rig stood in several thousand feet of seawater. The uncontrolled leak continued for months before the well was finally declared sealed in September 2010.