More Oil Spills: Workers missing and Environmental Disaster

green | April 23rd, 2010 - 9:13 AM

Tuesday’s “catastrophic” explosion at the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, off the coast of Louisiana, has left 11 workers missing and a 5-square-mile slick of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

When the explosion hit, there were 126 people aboard — 115 have been accounted for. The Coast Guard is continuing a search of the surrounding waters. The video below shows footage from Wednesday of the massive blaze. Eventually the rig, which had been leased by BP, sunk into the Gulf.


Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Fire @ Yahoo! Video

The environmental impact of the explosion is also causing severe worries. Experts fear that “up to 336,000 gallons could spill into the Gulf.” CNN reports that an additional 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel could also leak. Still, even at a worst-case-scenario level, the amount of destruction would be far smaller than that of the Exxon Valdez disaster. That 1989 spill “poured nearly 11 million gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.”

Officials are still seeking an explanation for the explosion. However, the Coast Guard has reported that they don’t believe it was terrorist-related. The Christian Science Monitor explains that it may have been a case of “blowout,” something that oil rigs have been dealing with for years.

Web searchers have been following the story closely since Tuesday. Online lookups for “oil rig explosion,” “deepwater horizon fire,” and “gulf of mexico oil spill” have all spiked tremendously.

thanks to Yahoo the Buzz Log: Oil Rig Explosion and Aftermath

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