New oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico
Posted on 02. Sep, 2010 by Leon Kennedy in Headlines
Ordinarily, one would expect a headline entitled “oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico” to represent a piece of very dated news, but unfortunately this is not so; another (in other words, in addition to the Deepwater Horizon) oil rig has recently exploded in the Gulf of Mexico; it really isn’t the Gulf’s year for oil drilling.
A facility owned by Mariner Energy suffered an explosion on Thursday, and while officials from the company are saying that no oil has spilled on account of the explosion, the Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. Coast Guard made a statement that there is a one-mile-long, 100-foot-wide oil sheen near the site off the explosion.
The offending oil drilling facility, known as the Vermillion Block 380, is located about 100 miles south of Vermillion Bay in Louisiana, and is located west of the Deepwater Horizon spill site. As the Vermillion rests on only 320 feet of water, it is expected that any efforts to plug its well would be significantly easier that in the case of the Deepwater Horizon. Prior to its shutdown following Thursday’s explosion, the Vermillion was producing roughly 1400 barrels of oil per day, along with nine million cubic feet of gas.
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