Reply With Quote
Damn. I'm glad I don't have a covered swimming pool.
whoopsies.
No this is not about the Deepwater Horizon, this just happened ( Thu Sep 2, 2010)
By ALAN SAYRE, Associated Press Writer Alan Sayre, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago
NEW ORLEANS, La. The Coast Guard is saying that a mile-long oil sheen is spreading from the site off an offshore petroleum platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.
The site of the explosion is west of where BP's massive spill occurred.
The Coast Guard said no one was killed Thursday in the explosion. The blast was spotted by a commercial helicopter flying over the site.
All 13 people aboard the rig were found floating in the water in survival gear.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) An offshore petroleum platform exploded and burned Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico off Lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill, but no leaks were reported.
The Coast Guard said no one was killed in the explosion, which was spotted by a commercial helicopter flying over the site Thursday morning.
All 13 people aboard the rig were found floating in the water in survival gear called "gumby suits", sticking close together, Coast Guard spokesman Chief Petty Officer John Edwards said.
"These guys had the presence of mind, used their training to get into those gumby suits before they entered the water. It speaks volumes to safety training and the importance of it because beyond getting off the rig there's all the hazards of the water such as hypothermia and things of that nature," Edwards said.
The platform was in about 340 feet of water, considered shallow water and far less than the roughly 5,000 feet where BP's well spewed oil and gas for three months after an April rig explosion.
The crew were rescued from the water by an offshore service vessel, the Crystal Clear, and taken to a nearby platform, said Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau.
All were being flown to a hospital in Houma to be checked over. Ben-Iesau said one person was injured, but the platform's owner, Houston-based Mariner Energy, Inc., said there were no injuries.
"Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident. The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken," the company said in a statement.
"In an initial flyover, no hydrocarbon spill was reported," Mariner said. It said the platform was located on Vermilion Block 380, approximately 100 miles off the Louisiana coast.
The platform is a fixed petroleum platform that was in production at the time of the fire, according to a homeland security operational update obtained by The Associated Press.
The update said the platform was producing about 58,800 gallons of oil and 900,000 cubic feet of gas per day. The platform can store 4,200 gallons of oil.
Seven Coast Guard helicopters, two airplanes and three cutters were dispatched to the scene from New Orleans, Houston and Mobile, Ala., Ben-Iesau said. She said authorities do not know whether oil was leaking from the site.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama was in a national security meeting and did not know whether Obama had been informed of the explosion.
"We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water," Gibbs said.
Mariner Energy focuses on oil and gas exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. In April, Apache Corp., another independent petroleum company, announced plans to buy Mariner in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $3.9 billion, including the assumption of about $1.2 billion of Mariner's debt. That deal is pending.
Apache spokesman Bob Dye said the platform is in shallow water. Responding to any oil spill in shallow water would be much easier than in deep water, where crews depend on remote-operated vehicles access equipment on the sea floor. Mariner said in initial flyover for no hydrocarbon spill.
A company report said the well was drilled in the third quarter of 2008 in 340 feet of water.
The platform is about 200 miles west of BP's blown-out well. On Friday, BP was expected to begin the process of removing the cap and failed blowout preventer, another step toward completion of a relief well that would put a finals eal on the well. The BP-leased rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 people and setting off a three-month leak that totaled 206 million gallons of oil .
Damn. I'm glad I don't have a covered swimming pool.
Gulf coast continues to be ed.
Repugs continue to laugh in the face of those who are getting ed.
I'm going there this weekend. Pretty sure I'll survive.
DarrinS continues to be a complete . More news at 5.
Go spouting your bull propoganda around unemployed bankrupt fisherman...pretty sure you wont.
How many oil rig explosions a year are acceptable to DarrinS?
10?
20?
50?
Seriously, God hates Louisiana. Wheres WC saying this has no effect on anything?
I'm actually going fishing. I'll let you know if I catch any mutant or otherwise tainted fish.
500 explosions?
1000?
I'll bite...
ZERO... in an ideal world...
In ours where Murphy's Law reigns supreme, people screw up, things break (equipment doesn't last forever), super alloys are rare, unforseen events do in fact occur and byproducts are produced. Should companies invest every last dollar to ensure none of their rigs can ever have incidents..??? It's an asymtotic approach, not one they are likely to attain even if they did...
Unfortunately, the energy we consume, the products we buy (plastics, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, etc...) come at a price...
Should we demand that the 'casualties' be reasonble? Absolutely. Companies have to be accountable for their actions just as people should...
I guess where I'm going with this is that we can't use a broad stroke and villify all offshore drilling for the mistakes that underperformers made. Environmentalists will latch on to such events and try and shut everything down... doesn't make sense to me, especially when most of them drive cars and consume as much power as the next guy...
Well put.
Kind of reminds me of that joke.
What's the deal with a plane's "black box?" If the black box is the only thing that survives a crash, why not build the whole plane out of black box?
False flag attacks by cap and trade pushers?
So how many are acceptable in the real world?
Obama is trying to push up the price of oil for his Muslim overlords.
"try and shut everything down"...
you mean try to stop the industry long enough to tell how we can make it safer?
Especially given the joke-of-a-regulatory-agency that has been asleep on the job since Bush put regulatory efforts to sleep during his eight years?
To pay for Mic e's Black-history celebration perhaps
No, her de-Christmasification of the White House.
This spill is no biggie. Just a light sheen. No oil from the operating well is involved, just some that was in storage at the well platform. This is not another BP disaster.
I will believe that the spill is harmless when I see Obama take a swim through it
Lets get some Corexit on that sheen though. Better safe than sorry. I'm just sayin'...
Hopefully this one will completely destroy this gulf ecosystem for decades.
Crap. The Discovery Channel better beef up their security.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
