Oil Platform Explosion In The Gulf Of Mexico Kills 1 And Injures 3

On Thursday, an oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed one and injured three, reports Fox News.

Fieldwood Energy reported the explosion on their Echo Platform right around 3 p.m. The explosion occurred 12 miles off the coast of Louisiana

“An isolated incident that has been fully contained,” Fieldwood Energy said in a statement they released late Thursday.

The company confirmed that the one person killed was an employee of a contractor. Another contractor’s employee’s was seriously injured. Everyone else aboard the platform has been accounted for.

In a prepared statement, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said that the platform was not in production at the time of the explosion. Damage to the platform was limited to only one section. The statement said that there has been no indication that any oil has leaked into the ocean.

Chauntra Rideaux, a spokesperson for the bureau, said that the workers who were injured are being treated at a medical facility. She gave no indication to what their conditions were. Rideaux said the explosion was under investigation.

This explosion took place just two months after a contractor was killed and two others injured when maintenance was being done on a Chevron natural gas pipeline just off the Louisiana coast. The cause of that explosion is still being investigated.

The U.S Safety Bureau coordinated with the Coast Guard on the response to the explosion, reports the Huffington Post.

Last year, the company bought $3.75 billion in shallow Gulf assets off of the Apache Corporation.

Fleetwood dished out $750 million in cash to purchase the SandRidge Energy’s Gulf Coast and Gulf of Mexico units. The deal gave them an additional 150 blocks of leased Gulf territory.

The company has been cited by federal officials for not complying with offshore oil regulations on 38 different occasions that date back to 1997. Eighteen of those citations were issued during the company’s drilling activity in 2001. Fleetwood was issued four citations in 2011, one in 2012 and one this year.

Fieldwood Energy has also had other injuries at different operations in the Gulf this year. In July, when Hercules Offshore was the onsite contractor, a worker suffered a broken finger while using an electronic jack to move a pallet of chemicals and the switch got stuck in the reverse position.

In another June incident that the safety bureau documented, a contractor working on a different Fleetwood Energy facility was injured when he fell down a stairway and broke his hip.

Fieldwood Energy is a portfolio company based in Houston, Texas.