The Coast Guard is responding to a report of a rig explosion and fire “and people in the water” in the Gulf of Mexico south of Vermilion Bay, authorities said.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Casey Ranel said the rig is around 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay and that a helicopter earlier today reported that it was in fire “and that there was smoke and there were people in the water.”
Holy fucking shit. Maybe we should work on alternative forms of energy, maybe? For real this time?
(Thanks to Slog tipper Brian.)
Not when gas is $3 a goddamn gallon, we won’t.
Paul, you forgot to mention the important shit.
A: Nobody was killed. A few injuries, but all crew members were rescued.
B: The rig was not currently producing any product, so there is almost no risk of a leak or spill.
Mike is correct. Also, aren’t there dozens of rig fires a year? This is just how we do business. Don’t think anything has changed; our energy habits certainly haven’t.
@1 agreed. until the price is $10+ a gallon, the “switch” is going to be incremental at best.
This comment has added to the carbon footprint of this post.
Drill, baby, drill!!!
There are fifty thousand wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Think about that for a minute.
The Baton Rouge Advocate is running the story about the rig explosion right above a story about Jindal asking for the moratorium on offshore drilling to be lifted. What a juxtaposition.
I just hit “refresh” to jack up the carbon footprint of this post a bit more.
A lot of people are working on this, but you either need a) commercial power to get 5x more expensive, b) alternative energy sources to get 5x cheaper to make, c) massive subsidies, or d) a healthy niche market to spur development. For solar, the niche market is sunny places in the tropics without a lot of grid infrastructure, not really a free flowing capital kind of bunch. The bright side of the economy picking up (if you consider it a bright side) will, I suppose, be a massive increase in fuel prices, which will dampen recovery but may spur some renewables development.
My carbon footprint wears Prada.
Don’t you think they should refrain from having oil well fires so close to Deepwater Horizon? I mean really, people are still healing from the deep wound that incident inflicted. It’s too soon and just a slap in the face. The oil and drilling companies should be sensitive to the families that died in that explosion and the environmental impacts it cause.
Oh wait, what were we talking about? Islamic extremist didn’t do this? Ok, well carry on.
Dear Canuck! My carbon footprint wears whatever 67-year-old Calvin Klein (“Much Further Back In the Closet Than Anderson Cooper”) has his new 20-year-old madeover-to-be-his-mini-me boyfriend wearing. Click on this link to increase the carbon footprint of this post:
http://gawker.com/5625681/the-revealing-…
Also, this rig is in water 340 feet deep, so were something to happen, it’d hopefully be much less of an ordeal to repair or resolve. Still.
Hey, if u can convince the 3 billion people on earth so poor they can’t afford a carbon foot print to stay that way, sure, we can give up oil.
@15: The idea is that developed nations (like the USA and most of Europe) cut their emissions so that developing nations (like India and China) and undeveloped nations (like much of Sub-Saharan Africa) can emit more in exchange, in order to develop their infrastructure to the point where they too can go green. The burden’s on us to make the leap to green energy.
Idiot.
Just end all corporate tax subsidies and exemptions for oil and let the market correct itself.
gg – I have a net negative carbon footprint – I grew up on tree farms and have not used up even a fraction of the carbon SURPLUS from that time. God I miss those tall trees some days.
How the hell does growing up on a tree farm accrue any kind of credit to you, William? You were just standing around with your mouth hanging open.
Oh, Fnarf, I’m sure he never grew up on a tree farm – that’s just more of his bullshit.