Fire Burns On Gulf Of Mexico Oil Platform, 4 Rescued

A fire on an oil production platform offshore Louisiana broke out early on Thursday and four people were evacuated from the platform, the U.S. Coast Guard said, adding there were no injuries reported.

At around 2:30am watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector New Orleans were notified that an oil production platform caught fire approximately 80 miles south of Grand Isle.

Four people were aboard on the platform and evacuated into the water and were recovered by an offshore supply vessel, the Coast Guard said.

It was not immediately clear how big the fire was or which oil company owns or uses the platform.

At the time, the Coast Guard issued the statement, it said that four offshore supply vessels were fighting the fire.

“There are no current reports of any pollution at the moment,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Third Class Travis Magee said to The Associated Press by phone from New Orleans. The fire was “suppressed but not extinguished”, the official added.

The Coast Guard said that the cause of the fire was under investigation. A non-profit oil spill response organization, Clean Gulf, is traveling to the site of the incident, the Guard said.

The Gulf of Mexico was the site of the worst maritime disaster in oil history, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig at a BP exploration well exploded in April in 2010, killing 11 people and leaking 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

More recently, the Gulf has had to cope with the elements rather than incidents. Gulf Coast refineries in the U.S. Southeast had braced for the passing of Hurricane Matthew in October last year, with industry representatives saying that very limited damage was done and refineries escaped “pretty easily”.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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