Eleven workers missing after Louisiana oil rig explosion

[Hannah Bell]

Eleven workers were still missing in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday night, 24 hours after an explosion on a British Petroleum (BP) oil rig 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Seventeen workers were seriously injured, and three remained in critical condition at the time of writing. The remaining 98 of the rig’s 116-person workforce were being transported by boat to safety.

The cause of the explosion on Deepwater Horizon, which occurred at about 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday, remains unknown...

BP, one of the world’s three largest oil companies, quickly released a statement declaring that rig operator Transocean is responsible for safety. Transocean is the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor, operating 146 rigs globally and employing over 21,000 workers. Though its corporate operations are in Houston, Transocean has been officially headquartered in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland in recent years...

Since 2001 there have been 69 deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires or explosions on oil rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico alone, according to the International Association of Drilling Contractors. These are extremely high injury and death rates when one considers that there are only 35,000 oil workers in the Gulf at any given time....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/oilr-a22.shtml