Oil rig explodes in Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana

Scientists and officials circle the Macondo oil well last month, as they prepared to drill a relief well following the BP spill. Photograph: Reuters

Fresh fears about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were raised today when fire forced workers to abandon an oil and gas platform, just six months after the BP explosion that created an environmental disaster in the region.

The coastguard reported an oil slick a mile long and 30 metres wide near the site of the fire, undercutting a claim by the oil company that there was no pollution.

It is not known yet whether the oil might have come from the platform or, more worryingly, from a well below the surface. The prospect alarmed the White House, environmentalists, fishermen and others on the Gulf Coast, still coping with the pollution from the BP oil spill.

The company, Mariner Energy, said none of the 13 workers, who fled the platform and took to the sea in immersion suits and aboard a raft, were injured. The coastguard said they were taken by ship to a nearby platform and from there to hospital in Houma, Louisiana to be checked.

A coastguard spokesman said the platform was still on fire and that ships, helicopters and planes had been sent from Houston, New Orleans and Mobile.

The fire is a setback for the oil industry, which has been arguing that drilling in the Gulf is safe and that the BP explosion was a rare event. It came only 24 hours after companies including Mariner had staged a rally in Houston against a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. About 5,000 employees had been bussed in for the rally.

A spokesman for Mariner, Patrick Cassidy, said he did not anticipate any pollution as the platform had not been drilling and there had been no blowout. “There is no hydrocarbon spill,” he said.

The fire had broken out on a facility above the water, at some distance from the wells, he added.

Dave Reed, an oil worker on a platform about 14 miles away, told CNN he could see the smoke and that a call had gone out for ships, helicopters and planes in the region to divert to the area. “It took an hour for the helicopters to get here and all 13 were taken from the water,” Reed said.

The alarm was raised by a commercial helicopter flying over the platform. A coastguard spokesman, Chief Petty John Edwards, said: “We were able to confirm that all people were accounted for.”

At the rally in Houston on Tuesday against the moratorium, Barbara Dianne Hagood, a spokesman for Mariner Energy, told the Financial Times: “I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this [the Obama] administration is trying to break us. The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf Coast, Gulf Coast employees and Gulf Coast residents.”

The fire broke out on the platform Vermilion Oil Rig 380, about 90 miles south of the Louisiana Coast and west of the earlier BP explosion that had killed 11 workers.

Both the White House and the coastguard said they did not anticipate any pollution but that ships equipped with facilities to help clean up spills had been sent to the area as a precaution.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said: “We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water.” The White House stressed that, unlike the BP rig, the platform was not a deepwater facility and was only working to a depth of 340ft.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Disaster Capitalism, Earth, Econo, Health, NWO, News, People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.