Oil Rig Explosion in Gulf of Mexico

By on September 2, 2010 in News 6

I’m starting to think that oil and the Gulf are not a good combination. From USA Today:

An off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded early Thursday, sending its crew of 13 scrambing into the water and creating a sheen of spilled oil.

The oil could be seen in a mile-long plume with a width of about 100 feet, Coast Guard Petty Officer Thomas Blue said. The slick was reported by the rig’s owner, Mariner Energy of Houston, and had not been confirmed by the Coast Guard, Blue said.

An oil industry vessel that was nearby plucked the crewmembers out of the water and brought them to a nearby platform, Blue said. Coast Guard helicopters were in the process of flying them to a hospital. One of the workers suffered a minor injury, Blue said.

The crew had donned brightly colored survival gear known as “Gumby suits” that helped them float and made them more visible.

The explosion and rescue attempt were reminiscent of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which was triggered by a blowout from a newly drilled oil reservoir. The resulting oil spill lasted nearly three months and became the nation’s worst off-shore environmental disaster in history. Eleven workers died in that blast.

Continues at USA Today …

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  • Vox Penii

    According to NOAA, there are about four thousand (4,000) oil and natural gas rigs in the gulf of Mexico. > http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/06mexico/background/oil/media/platform_600.html < and they’ve had one (1) catastrophic failure within recent memory.

    That’s a damn good safety record.

    • Haystack

      Plus we have several more bodies of water to serve as backups after we’ve turned the Gulf of Mexico into a toilet.

    • connie dobbs

      Short memory you have. This makes “two” (2) this year. That’s one bigger (use both club feet to count, if necessary). But I get what you’re point is – this one isn’t a catastrophe. However, that makes your whole argument revolve on your personal definition of “catastrophe”. So that means your argument isn’t really an argument, it’s an opinion.

      Saved you a lot of time on that one by arguing in your favor. Too bad you lost.

    • Liam_McGonagle

      Um, I think most people would call total destruction of the rig as a safety ‘failure’ rather than ‘success’. So actually that’s at LEAST Two. Year’s not out yet.

      But even more than that, is it acceptable to you that these companies get free rides after a decades-long parade of regulatory violations just because we are told of only two headline-grabbing examples?

      http://blogs.chron.com/newswatchenergy/archives/2010/09/mariner_involve.html

      Given the effect on the SUSTAINABLE economies of tourism and fishing of the Horizon, failure I wouldn’t agree with your notion at all.

      You wanna gamble, gamble with your own money. Not the ecosystems and livliehoods of several states.

  • connie dobbs

    Short memory you have. This makes “two” (2) this year. That’s one bigger (use both club feet to count, if necessary). But I get what you’re point is – this one isn’t a catastrophe. However, that makes your whole argument revolve on your personal definition of “catastrophe”. So that means your argument isn’t really an argument, it’s an opinion.

    Saved you a lot of time on that one by arguing in your favor. Too bad you lost.

  • AD

    I’m starting to that you are posting shit for the sake of sensationalistic comments.