May 23, 2015
U.S. Coast Guard aerial photo shows
a fire on board an oil production platform in Breton Sound Block 21 located
about 20 miles (32 km) east of the boot tip of Louisiana, in the Gulf of Mexico
May 22, 2015. (Reuters/Liam Mcdonnell)
Fire broke out early Friday morning on a small
oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the evacuation of 28 workers. No
injuries were reported, but a 1.4-mile oil slick was visible in the water.
The oil platform is located 20 miles
east of the tip of Louisiana. The rig has been shut down, according to the
Coast Guard, but the platform still holds an estimated 5,000 gallons of crude
oil. Crews in response vessels are on site working to extinguish the blaze.
Texas Petroleum Investment, which
owns and operates the platform, has halted production, Reuters reported.
"The production platform
where the fire occurred gathers oil and then pumps it through a pipeline so
there is little oil stored on site and all wells feeding the platform have been
shut down," David Marguiles, spokesman for Texas Petroleum Investment,
said in an email to ABC
News.
While the mishap is still under
investigation, a company statement said a compressor on the platform is believed
to have caught fire.
The platform is used to gather some
90,000 gallons of oil a day from a field of 50 to 60 wells, Marguiles said.
Texas Petroleum Investment is a
Houston-based, private exploration and production company with operations along
the Gulf coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, according to its
LinkedIn profile. The company was founded in 1989 and operates more than 2,000
producing wells, it said.
Louisiana’s offshore crude
production averaged about 14,000 barrels a day in March, according to state
data. Total Gulf production in federal waters, which are more than three miles
off the coast, was 1.46 million barrels a day in February, according to the
Energy Information Administration.
The lost output from the well is
small in comparison to the total daily oil production in the region, but it
comes the same week as a pipeline leak in Southern California that spilled
crude oil onto beaches, once again sparking concerns about responsibility and
environmental considerations.
Elsewhere, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration has just released a report on the number of dolphins
dying from unusual diseases about the same time as the infamous BP Deepwater
Horizon oil platform spill in the Gulf in 2010, which lasted five months.
Oil sheen emanating from a Texas Petroleum Investment Co. platform in Breton Sound on May 22, 2015. Taken on a Gulf Monitoring Consortium monitoring flight.