Oil rig spilling 13,000 gallons per hour...

[SidDithers]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/us/23rig.html

Search continues for missing oil rig workers

Stanley Murray of Monterey, La., said his son Chad, an electrician, had made it off the rig just in time. A neighbor, Mr. Murray said, did not. “My son had just walked off the drill floor,” he said.

He said his son told him that the 11 missing workers could not have survived the explosion. “The 11 that’s missing, they won’t find them,” Mr. Murray said.

Coast Guard rescue teams searched the area by boat throughout the night, then resumed the air search, by plane and helicopter, on Thursday morning.

The explosion occurred Tuesday night, and on Wednesday afternoon crews were still fighting the fire, which was largely contained to the rig but in photographs provided by the Coast Guard appeared to be shooting enormous plumes of flame into the air. Rear Adm. Mary Landry, the commander of the Coast Guard’s Eighth District, estimated that 13,000 gallons of crude were pouring out per hour.

Officials said the pollution was considered minimal so far because most of the oil and gas was being burned up in the fire. “But that does have the potential to change,” said David Rainey, the vice president in charge of the Gulf of Mexico exploration for BP, which is leasing the rig.

Photo credit: Gerald Herbert/AP, seen at CSM link below


CSM story here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0422/Amid-search-for-Deepwater-Horizon-oil-rig-survivors-What-happened

Amid search for Deepwater Horizon oil rig survivors: What happened?

Despite the Deepwater Horizon oil rig's state-of-the-art equipment, drilling in the deep blue is still a roughneck's job – a combustible mix of big machines and highly flammable materials.

The Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig is one of the most advanced engineering feats in the world, having drilled deeper than any other waterborne platform. But when the massive fifth-generation rig exploded late Tuesday night, injuring 17 workers and leaving 11 still missing, the accident proved even the most modern deepwater platforms are not immune to an age-old danger of tapping the earth: what roughnecks call, simply, blowout.

Sid