Oil facility in Gulf of Mexico catches fire, leading to more oil in the water

Updated: 09/03/10 2:55pm
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Know more on today’s top story:

Explosion of oil facility leads to swift response from Washington, D.C. http://bit.ly/ascbI (via USA Today)

House Democrats are investigating the explosion http://politi.co/9HYmTw (via POLITICO)

A man who said he saw the oil platform blast told CNN he saw “a bunch of smoke” coming up http://bit.ly/9s4EwU

Possibly Related

ATLANTA (MCT) — Another offshore oil facility caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday morning, sending 13 workers into the water to be rescued by boat, and sending enough petroleum into the water to create a mile-long-by-100-foot-wide sheen, according to the US Coast Guard.

The cause of the accident is not yet known and is under investigation.

It comes more than four months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blowout, which killed 11 offshore workers and resulted in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The government and BP are still working on the ultimate plug of that well, which has not leaked since mid-July.

Among environmentalists and liberal lawmakers, reaction was swift.

“In the wake of the BP catastrophe, this is an extremely disturbing event,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who has led a congressional investigation into the BP spill.

In a Thursday afternoon news conference, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said that the oil platform’s operator, Mariner Energy, reported that all of the site’s seven active wells had been “shut in,” meaning they were not leaking oil.

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Published September 3, 2010 in State

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