2 missing in Gulf explosion, fire

11 hurt on oil platform in 56 feet of water off Louisiana coast

A supply vessel moves near an oil rig damaged by an explosion and fire Friday in the Gulf of Mexico about 25 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La.
A supply vessel moves near an oil rig damaged by an explosion and fire Friday in the Gulf of Mexico about 25 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La.

— Two people were missing and an oil sheen was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion and fire at a platform owned by Black Elk Energy.

The explosion occurred just before 9 a.m. as work was being done on the platform about 20 miles off the coast of Grand Isle, La., Drake Foret, a Coast Guard spokesman, said in a phone interview Friday. The fire was extinguished and the platform was still structurally sound.

The explosion Friday draws new attention to offshore safety a day after London-based BP agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and pay $4.5 billion, including a record criminal fine, for a 2010 explosion at its Macondo well that killed 11 workers and resulted in the United States’ largest offshore oil spill. That episode caused the government to halt new deep-water exploration drilling permits for months and to restructure its oversight of the industry.

“Today’s accident makes clear that the hazards of oil and gas drilling are not in America’s rear view,” said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the presidential commission that investigated the BP oil spill. “Our leaders must keep that squarely in mind when considering where and how to allow further drilling along our coasts and in our communities.”

Twenty-two people were on Black Elk’s platform, which was not producing oil or natural gas at the time of the explosion, according to the Coast Guard. Eleven injured workers were flown to area hospitals.

Four platform workers were in critical condition at West Jefferson Medical Center and were being transferred to a hospital in Baton Rouge, said Taslin Alfonzo, a spokesman for the Marrero, La., hospital. Four others were at Lady of the Sea hospital, where their conditions weren’t listed, and two at Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma, La., were in good condition.

Scott Sullivan, a charter captain for Mexican Gulf Fishing Co., was about 15 miles away from the platform when it exploded.

“I cast and turned around and out of the corner of my eye caught a giant fireball,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “Then they did all the maydays on the radio. As a boat guy, you never want to hear that.”

Unlike Macondo, the Black Elk explosion wasn’t on a drilling rig and was in shallow water, about 56 feet deep. An oil sheen that measures one-half mile by one-eighth of a mile was reported near the Black Elk platform, the Coast Guard said. Two boats, two helicopters and a plane were being used in the search for the two missing people.

The fire happened at a facility on West Delta Block 32, according to a statement on Houston-based Black Elk’s website.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are impacted,” the company said. “We have Black Elk personnel on the scene and en route.”

Black Elk holds stakes in more than 854 wells on 155 platforms off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf, in water depths ranging from less than 10 feet to more than 6,000 feet, according to the company’s website. The company, formed in 2007, is 75 percent owned by Platinum Partners, a New York-based hedge fund.

Uri Landesman, president of Platinum, declined to comment on the fire.

Black Elk paid a $307,500 penalty on Sept. 11 after Interior Department inspectors found the company fell behind on testing valves on an offshore oil facility for leakage, the agency said on its website.

In response to the Macondo incident, the government split up the agency that oversaw drilling on federal lands and offshore, with one entity solely focused on regulation and enforcement.

Inspectors for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement were on the scene investigating Friday’s incident, said Nicholas Pardi, an agency spokesman.

Two years after the BP disaster, the presidential commission gave Congress a low grade for failing to pass any legislation that would make drilling safer, according to an April 17 report.

“Congress still needs to pass legislation that codifies the actions taken by the Obama administration, increases penalties and liabilities for companies that spill, and ensures that the agencies charged with overseeing offshore oil drilling have the resources they need to protect workers and the environment,” Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in an e-mail Friday.

“Whenever there is a fire or a loss of life, it should prompt the government and companies to ask if we are doing enough to promote the safety culture,” Frances Ulmer, another former member of the presidential BP commission, said in a phone interview. “There needs to be constant reflection and adaptation to new technologies, new challenges and opportunity to improve both the regulatory system and operations.” Information for this article was contributed by Christine Harvey, Kelly Bit, Mike Lee and Margaret Cronin Fisk of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 11/17/2012

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