Gulf oil platform catches fire
NEW ORLEANS – The Coast Guard was searching Friday for two workers missing after a fire erupted on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, sending an ominous black plume of smoke into the air reminiscent of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion that transformed the oil industry and life along the coast.
The fire, begun while workers were using a torch to cut an oil line, critically injured at least four workers who had burns over much of their bodies.
The images were eerily similar to the massive oil spill that killed 11 workers and took months to bring under control. It came a day after BP agreed to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the 2010 spill and pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties.
There were important differences with the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and began one of the nation’s biggest environmental disasters: Friday’s fire was put out within hours, rather than burning for more than a day and causing the rig to collapse and sink. It’s a production platform in shallow water, rather than an exploratory drilling rig looking for new oil on the seafloor almost a mile deep.
Still, the accident was a vivid reminder of the dangerous business of offshore drilling and the risk it poses to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem and shoreline. A sheen of oil about a half-mile long and 200 yards wide was reported on the Gulf surface, but officials believe it came from residual oil on the platform.
“It’s not going to be an uncontrolled discharge from everything we’re getting right now,” Coast Guard Capt. Ed Cubanski said.
Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Bobby Nash said late Friday that monitoring continues to show no oil is coming from the well.
Eleven people were taken by helicopter to area hospitals or for treatment on shore by emergency medical workers.
Taslin Alfonzo, spokeswoman for West Jefferson Medical Center in suburban New Orleans, said four injured workers arrived in critical condition with second- and third-degree burns over much of their bodies.
The production platform owned by Houston-based Black Elk Energy is about 25 miles southeast of Grand Isle, on the western side of the Mississippi River delta. The Coast Guard said 24 people were aboard the platform at the time of the fire.
Cubanski said the platform appeared to be structurally sound. He said only about 28 gallons of oil were in the broken line on the platform.
The Black Elk platform is in 56 feet of water – a depth much easier for engineers to manage if a spill had happened.