NEW ORLEANS - The flow of natural gas, water and sand has been stopped at a drilling rig off Louisiana’s coast, the operator and federal regulators said Saturday.
The flow stopped about 7 p.m. Friday, a little more than two hours after EnVen Energy Ventures LLC began pumping heavy drilling mud into the well, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in a news release.
The flow began about 8:30 a.m. Thursday. No injuries or pollution have been reported.
EnVen, of suburban Metairie, said in a news release that the well was being closely monitored and that the company was working with regulators to find out what caused the leak and how to safely resume drilling.
Crews were still working to set up barriers to any further natural gas flow, said the bureau, an agency overseen by the Department of the Interior.
An oil and gas production platform near the En-Ven rig was shut down as a precaution.
A natural-gas blowout off Louisiana’s coast in July 2013 ended one day later. Authorities believed the well had been clogged by sand and sediment. That rig, operated by Hercules Offshore Inc., blew out and later caught fire. Part of the rig collapsed before the well apparently plugged itself.
The BP PLC blowout in April 2010 off the southeast Louisiana coast killed 11 workers and spewed natural gas and oil for nearly three months from a blown well nearly a mile under the Gulf’s surface. The EnVen rig is in relatively shallow waters, where measures to control a leak or blowout are easier to manage than in the Gulf’s deeper waters.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 02/02/2014