The platform owned by Mariner Energy exploded early Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles west of where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April.
Administration officials have recently been considering walking back limits on offshore drilling enacted after the Deepwater Horizon incident and resultant oil spill, but environmentalists said Thursday that the second explosion proves the oil industry is not ready to renew operations in the
gulf.
"Sadly, today's news comes as no surprise. Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is like playing Russian roulette," said Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Leaders for Oceana, an oceans advocacy group started by actor Ted Danson, called on the administration to maintain the deepwater drilling ban through November 30, when it is set to expire. And Environment America officials called on the administration to permanently ban any new offshore drilling.
Asked if the second explosion would have any impact on the drilling moratorium, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs hesitated.
"Not that I know of. And I say that largely because, obviously, we are still trying to gather information about the events that are happening at that site right now," Gibbs said.
Obama administration officials placed a ban on new deepwater drilling and stalled work on shallow-water operations via a "notice to lessees" seeking more safety information on rigs, one month after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded.
But those same officials, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement, Michael Bromwich, said in recent weeks that the moratorium could be lifted if certain safety requirements were met.
Officials would be looking to the findings of the commission appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the spill before deciding whether to end the moratorium early, Salazar said in July.
A report from the Bipartisan Policy Center issued last week made a clear case for lifting the ban before November 30, spill commission co-chairman William Reilly told Platts Energy Week Sunday.
The ban on deepwater drilling directly applies to vessels similar to BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, which was drilling roughly a mile under water. The Mariner Energy rig that exploded Thursday is stationed in about 400 feet of water.
"The commission will follow today's incident closely for any lessons applicable to its important work of determining the root causes and best response to the BP disaster," spill commission spokesman Dave Cohen said Thursday.
Meanwhile, an industry group urged caution.
The Mariner Energy platform, unlike in the BP disaster, was not doing any drilling, said Jim Noe, executive director of the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition, a trade group representing offshore oil and gas support companies.
"We should wait for the facts before we use what happened today on a production platform as a reason to stop offshore drilling, especially when the incident didn't have anything to do with offshore drilling," Noe said.
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
