Oil sheen spreading from Gulf platform explosion

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_rig_explosion

By ALAN SAYRE, Associated Press Writer Alan Sayre, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins 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.

nt

black gold, my jokes are....

which is a shallow water operation

But they'll probably spray more just to make certain.

It's all so pathetic.

Just unreal, isn't it?

it makes me do this :puke:

I hear complaining about the drilling moratorium (I live in New Orleans) is gonna get smacked hard.

larger and deeper than the Deepwater Horizon, with highly suspect saftey records.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8489418


The Next Deepwater Horizon?

Obama halted new offshore drilling, but allowed existing production to continue—including another BP Gulf rig flying numerous red flags.

— By Kate Sheppard

Fri Jun. 4, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Last week, President Barack Obama put new deepwater drilling operations on hold for another six months. With the Gulf of Mexico spill entering its fifth week, this move was meant to show that the administration is taking a more cautious approach to offshore drilling, after it had announced a vast expansion just weeks before the BP disaster.

Many news accounts on the moratorium extension implied that all deepwater Gulf operations had been shut down. But that's not the case. The administration is allowing deepwater drilling operations already in production in the Gulf to continue—including some that may pose a greater risk than the Deepwater Horizon. Exhibit A: BP's other major Gulf operation, the Atlantis, which sits 124 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Kenneth Abbott, a project control supervisor BP contracted to work on the Atlantis, and the environmental group Food & Water Watch filed suit against the federal government on May 17 seeking a temporary injunction to force the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to shut down the platform. Abbott claims that his contract was terminated shortly after he alerted management to the rig's lack of crucial engineering documents in late 2008.


According to Abbott, the BP Atlantis lacks more than 6,000 documents that are key to operating the rig safely. Abbott has said that the vast majority of the project's subsea piping and instrument diagrams were not approved by engineers, and the safety systems are out of date. In March 2009, Abbott took his concerns about the rig to MMS, the Department of Interior office responsible for regulating offshore drilling. He says the agency requested some of these documents from BP, but failed to seek specific diagrams of key components necessary for ensuring the rig's secure operation.

An internal BP email that came out in the course of Abbott's dispute refers to the potential for "catastrophic operator errors" on the rig due to these lapses. The suit argues that without these documents, the rig operators "are flying blind, and have no way to assure the safety of offshore drilling operations." Food & Water Watch began pushing for lawmakers to intervene on the rig back in August 2009.

<snip>

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051701933.html

Lawsuit seeks closing of BP platform in the Gulf (Atlantis)

Source: Washington Post

NEW ORLEANS -- A federal judge has been asked to shut down a BP oil and gas platform that operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents in the same part of the Gulf as the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

A lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court says the U.S. Interior Department failed to investigate warnings of possible safety problems with BP's Atlantis platform.

Atlantis is stationed in 7,070 feet of water more than 150 miles south of New Orleans.

In 2009, an independent firm hired by BP found that the giant petroleum company was violating its own policies by not having completed engineering documents on board the Atlantis when it began operating in 2007.

The lawsuit was filed by Washington, D.C.-based Food and Water Watch.

and IIRC, Salazar's legal minions got that one decided in favor of the firm to continue operations, even while the probe not nearly finished yet.

That's the next thing we'll be hearing.

gee, do you suppose that offshore drilling activity is just plain wrong?

Millions of gallons of it! Damn the consequences!

Thanks, big gummit, for letting the corporations run amok.

We OWE you!

(earlier reports said not)

Another offshore Gulf oil platform explodes into flames

Another offshore Gulf of Mexico oil platform has exploded into flames today and it’s uncertain what the status of a potential oil leak is.

Mariner Energy, the company that owns the platform, reported a slight oil sheen that measured one nautical mile by 100 feet.

Gulf Oil Platform was Active at Time of Explosion

Mariner Energy has told the US Coast Guard that the oil production platform was active at the time of the explosion, servicing as many as seven active wells. There are a total of 13 wells connected to the platform, said Jindal.

“They are saying that they’ve shut in the production platform,” said Jindal. “If that’s true that’s a very important step but we haven’t independently verified that.”

more: http://www.liveoilprices.co.uk/oil/oil_companies/09/2010/another-offshore-gulf-oil-platform-explodes-into-flames.html

edit to add- there's also this report:

"The rig is a fixed 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 58,800 gallons of oil and 900,000 cubic feet of gas per day. The platform can store 4,200 gallons of oil."

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/sep/02/10/oil-rig-explodes-louisiana-coast-ar-484740/

It would seem so.... :cry: