An oil platform explosion on Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico forced the crew to dive into the sea and threatened further damage to waters still recovering from the BP disaster.
Fire engulfed the offshore platform 160km south of the Louisiana coast shortly after 9am and massive plumes of gray smoke billowed into the sky as rescuers rushed to fish out the workers.
Photographs showed the 13-strong crew linking arms as they bobbed up and down in special flotation suits before being plucked out of the water by a nearby rig. Three US Coast Guard helicopters and a commercial chopper then transported them to a hospital.
All escaped serious injury.
Workers told rescue crews they managed to shut down the wells before evacuating the platform and had spotted a thin sheen of oil spreading for about 1.6km.
Crews from three firefighting vessels managed to extinguish the blaze after about five hours and the oil sheen was no longer visible by the time the Coast Guard arrived.
“The fire is out, and Coast Guard helicopters on scene and vessels on scene have no reports of a visible sheen in the water,” Coast Guard Eighth District chief of staff Captain Peter Troedsson told reporters.
Coast Guard vessels and aircraft were scheduled to continue surveillance of the area yesterday to search for any possible sheen, the Coast Guard Eighth District said in a statement.
“Responders remain vigilant for any evidence of oil on the water,” it said.
The incident ignited fresh criticism of the oil and gas industry as the region struggles to recover from the BP disaster, the largest ever maritime oil spill.
“The BP disaster was supposed to be the wake up call, but we hit the snooze button. Today the alarm went off again,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club environmental group. “The oil industry continues to rail against regulation, but it’s become all too clear that the current approach to offshore drilling is simply too dangerous.”
“How many times are we going to gamble with lives, economies and ecosystems?” Greenpeace USA Oceans campaign director John Hocevar asked. “It’s time we learn from our mistakes and go beyond oil.”
The Mariner Energy platform that went ablaze on Thursday was operating in relatively shallow water, about 103m, and was not a drilling rig. It had been producing approximately 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate and 260,515m³ of natural gas per day, the company said.
The White House said early in the day that it was monitoring the situation and reserved judgment until more information was available.
The US House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee, which has held a congressional investigation into the BP spill, sent a swift letter to Mariner Energy’s chairman requesting a briefing on the incident.
“In the wake of the BP catastrophe, this is an extremely disturbing event,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the committee chairman. “I call on the administration to immediately redouble safety reviews of all offshore drilling and platform operations in the gulf and take all appropriate action to ensure safety and protection of the environment.”
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS