Three oil workers were injured in a fire accident on a gas rig about 20 miles off the Louisiana coast this week. The workers sustained burn injuries, and had to be rushed to the hospital. The Coast Guard is investigating the fire.
According to the US Coast Guard as reported in Reuters, the fire broke out while the rig was converting an inactive gas well for disposal of waste saltwater. It was a work over rig, which is typically used to perform repair work on an existing well.
Offshore safety along the Gulf Coast has been a hot topic since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion earlier this year that left 11 workers dead. Since that disaster, the Minerals Management Services has unraveled, and in its new avatar, has evolved into an agency called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. We have learned since the April Gulf of Mexico explosion, that the Minerals Management Services had a cozy relationship with the oil and gas industry.
While this relationship might have done a lot for the oil and gas industry which benefited greatly from such close ties, it did nothing for offshore safety. So chummy was this relationship between the federal agency in charge of oil and gas resources and the industry it was meant to regulate, that high-ranking agency officials often referred to oil and gas companies as their “clients,” “customers,” and even “partners.” This relationship had often left maritime attorneys dismayed.
It’s hard to regulate a company when the agency you work for has forced itself into a subordinate position, to the oil industry it is meant to regulate. This special friendship has had a devastating impact on offshore safety, and contributed in no small part to the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
