oh please not again
 

Rescue efforts underway after oil rig explosion in Gulf
An oil rig has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are underway for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the rig total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil rig 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries

The well was shut in. So there "should be" no leakage.
The drilling moratorium proponent just got ammunition. That crap is killing the Louisiana industrial markets.

They now report a mile-long oil sheen. Nice.

What can go wrong will go wrong...

From the news:

"The Coast Guard is backing off its earlier report that an oil sheen about a mile long was spreading following a platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau said Thursday afternoon that crews were unable to confirm the oil sheen. The Coast Guard says platform owner Mariner Energy reported a sheen about a mile long and 100 feet wide. But the company has said in a statement that an initial flyover didn't find an oil spill.

Ben-lesau says the fire on the platform has been put out. All 13 crew members were rescued from the water."

I wonder what Obama is thiking now? He probably wishes he were the Maytag repairman about now....

I wouldn't put it past his administration to have put someone up to deliberately sabotaging something and causing this in order to give credibility to his moratorium.

Yeah but would an act of sabotage be worth the headache of having to deal with the FAUX over SNAFUing the clean up...and if it ever leaked that it wa sabotage...well that would be the end of Mr Obama.

Obama 'n pals are certainly not beyond pushing the limits. I certainly wouldn't put it past them. Or some middle eastern interest. Or BP. All of them stand to gain from killing US production.

So what your saying is that integrity and honesty has been replaced by A MORAL situational ethics..

That is why the hand of Gawd is against the USA...

Getting back to actual fact-based discussion . . .

From company statement:

Co reports that the fire at its production platform on Vermilion Block 380 has been extinguished. The crew was transported to medical facilities onshore. No injuries have been reported. Automated shutoff equipment on the platform safely turned off the flow of oil and gas from the platform's seven producing wells before the fire occurred and the crew evacuated. Mariner is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident. The company mobilized fire response vessels immediately upon learning of the incident. The cause of the fire remains unknown, and an investigation is underway.

From media (Christian Science Monitor):

The platform collected production from seven wells producing about 1,400 barrels of oil per day and 9 million cubic feet of gas. Production was shut down, the company said, before the crew evacuated.

Owner of oil platform that exploded Thursday has been cited for 10 accidents in the Gulf in past 4 years | NOLA.com

platform owner is a scofflaw

Was the big O reading a nursery rhyme ?

No ? Did he forget to read his memos ?

No ? Generally I find that people only accuse others of what they would do themselves.

From the link:
Sounds like they cut too many corners to save costs.

It's a dangerous business. Fires happen.
It's always been dangerous but it's safer today than it used to be.

while the above is true, the things that stand out here are:

1. unusually high incident rate for this co.
and

2. it is very unusual for all the workers to have to jump in the water to escape from the rig


I guess the moratorium did not go far enough.

What??? why did all the workers jump off the rig when a fire happened?? You obviously have never worked, much less been on a rig, whether production or drilling. You can bet that safety meeting are at the highest they have ever been due to the Deep water. First rule of safety is self preservation and the safety of your co-worker.

How?

Fires like this happen all the time out there, they've just never quite had the scrutiny of the unwashed masses like they have now. This event was a non-event.

Mike, see post # 17

And, how exactly does that make you think that the moratorium didn't do enough? Should we expand it to include any moving machine, any gasoline tank, and anything involving a human being in the oil and gas industry? all of those things are just giant potential sources of mass destruction, we must save the world from them with a moratorium.

It was a simple fire on a rig. It happens. It's happened before, it'll happen again.

As I said, it appears NOT to have been just a simple fire on a rig. THose happen every day, but the workers do not have to evacuate, they do nto have to evacuate by jumping into the sea, and such simple fires do not happen again and again to one particular co.

Federal law mandates a study of effects before leasing. It was not followed.

Jumping into the ocean is the industry's routine response to a platform fire? Wow. Guess it was good that a ship was <2 hours away and the sea wasn't stormy. No lifeboats on production platforms?

the fire was so bad, they couldn't get to the boats