Mariner energy platform burns

Boats shoot water onto the Vermilion 380-A oil-and-gas platform Thursday. Owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy, the rig had exploded into flames in the Gulf of Mexico earlier that day—135 days after the BP oil rig explosion that resulted in millions of barrels of crude being spilled into the Gulf.

The fire on the shallow-water oil rig, which sits about 130 kilometers off Louisiana, was extinguished Thursday afternoon, at which time the cause of the Mariner Energy oil-rig fire remained unknown.

All 13 workers on the platform had donned protective suits and taken to the water after the oil rig caught fire. About two hours later a rig-supply boat rescued the Mariner Energy employees. No serious injuries have been reported, according to the New York Times.

A press release from Mariner Energy stated that no oil leaks had been found as of Thursday afternoon. At the same time the U.S. Coast Guard, contradicting an earlier statement, reported no oily sheen around the Mariner Energy rig.

Oil and Water

Ships douse a Mariner Energy oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to extinguish a fire that started early Thursday.

The fixed platform’s base is 103 meters underwater, much shallower than the 1500-meter depth of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, a once floating rig that now rests on the Gulf seafloor after an oil rig explosion in April.

Lee Hunt, the president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, told ABC News that the Mariner Energy platform “doesn’t have a drilling rig on it, it’s essentially a small refinery. Pure oil never comes up.” Rather than boring into the seafloor for oil, platforms such as the one that caught fire Thursday pump oil out of existing wells.

The Coast Guard noted that, like other nondrilling rigs, the Mariner Energy platform doesn’t have a blowout preventer, a safety device that cuts off an oil well in case of failure. The blowout preventer at BP’s Deepwater Horizon wellhead famously failed, allowing millions of barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf of Mexico after the April oil rig explosion.

Safe, sound after oil rig fire

Workers from the Mariner Energy oil rig that burned Thursday are dropped off at a hospital in Houma, Louisiana, that afternoon.

To evacuate the rig, all 13 workers donned special, buoyant suits, bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico until they were rescued by a rig-supply ship.

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Peter Troedsson told reporters Thursday afternoon that none of the workers were seriously injured.

- National Geographic