The Coast Guard was searching Friday for two workers missing after an explosion and fire damaged an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, reports the Associated Press.
火,开始我们当工人re using a torch to cut an oil line, critically injured at least four workers who had burns over much of their bodies.
The images were eerily similar to the massive oil spill that killed 11 workers and took months to bring under control. It came a day after BP agreed to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the 2010 spill and pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties.
But there are a few important differences with the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and began one of the nation’s biggest environmental disasters: Friday’s fire was put out within hours, rather than burning for more than a day and causing the rig to collapse and sink.
Also, the rig that caught fire Friday is a production platform in shallow water, rather than an exploratory drilling rig looking for new oil on the seafloor almost a mile deep.
Still, the accident was a vivid reminder of the dangerous business of offshore drilling and the risk it poses to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem and shoreline.
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