No sign of oil after Gulf platform fire -Gov’t

NEW ORLEANS, (Reuters) – An oil and gas platform  operated by Mariner Energy burst into flames in the Gulf of  Mexico yestersday, but the crew of 13 escaped and there were  no signs of an oil spill, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

“The boats and the aircraft on scene cannot see a sheen,”  U.S. Coast Guard Captain Peter Troedsson told a news conference  in New Orleans.

Initially, Mariner reported there was a mile-long oily  sheen on the water around the platform, according to the  government.

The fire burned for several hours before it was  extinguished. A company spokesman said it started on an upper  deck of the platform where living quarters were located, and  had not been caused by a “blowout,” or sudden release of oil  and gas from a well.

The crew, plucked from the Gulf by an oil supply vessel,  was transported to a hospital onshore and no injuries have been  reported, the Houston-based company said.

Automated shutoff equipment turned off the flow of oil and  gas from the platform’s seven producing wells as the crew  evacuated, Mariner said.

The cause of the fire is still unknown and under  investigation, the company said.

“It’s unlikely to have long-term implications for  production in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Raoul LeBlanc, a senior  director at PFC Energy in Houston.    Nevertheless, the accident brought unwelcome attention to  the offshore drilling industry as it is trying to roll back a  six-month deepwater drilling moratorium imposed in the wake of  the BP Plc Macondo well disaster, which killed 11 workers and  poured 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Environmental groups said the Mariner explosion reinforced  the need to keep the moratorium in place. White House spokesman  Robert Gibbs said he did not know whether the fire would affect  the moratorium, scheduled to expire Nov. 30.

Several analysts said the accident could hurt the industry  in its court battle to lift the drilling halt early.

“The incident has happened at the wrong time,” said Eugen  Weinberg, head of commodity research at Commerzbank. “The  political establishment will probably move quickly as everybody  still remembers the slow dealing with the Macondo accident and  the dramatic pictures from this summer.”

The platform is located more than 90 miles (145 km) south  of Louisiana’s Vermilion Bay, 200 miles west of BP’s ruptured  Macondo well. It is in relatively shallow water 340 feet (104  meters) deep.

The platform’s output is a small fraction of the 1.6  million barrels of oil and 6.4 billion cubic feet of gas the  region produces on a daily basis.

The facility averaged 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas  per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate per day during  the last week of August, Mariner said.
News of the fire helped push crude oil prices up $1.11 to  $75.02 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil prices  were also boosted by Hurricane Earl, which is threatening  refineries along the U.S. East Coast.

Shares of Mariner Energy fell 2.6 percent to close at  $22.75 and shares of Apache Corp , which is expected to buy  Mariner Energy in a $2.7 billion deal, fell 1.3 percent to  close at $91.30.