Louisiana Drilling Rig Overturns: Accident At Mobile Inland Drilling Unit

MORGAN CITY, La. (AP / Huffington Post)— Officials say an oil drilling rig on its way to a scrap yard has overturned in Louisiana.

No injuries have been reported. The overturned rig is unrelated to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatens the coast's fragile ecosystem.

The Coast Guard said Friday that the rig, called a mobile inland drilling unit, overturned about 80 miles west-southwest of New Orleans.

It can carry about 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel, but Coast Guard officials did not know how much fuel was on board. Coast Guard investigators say no fuel leaks have been found.

About 500 feet of boom has been set up around the rig to contain any fuel that might leak as a precaution.

Tina Moore, the owner of T. Moore Services, which owned the rig, says it was being transported to a demolition and scrap yard. She says the rig was mounted on a barge.

The Coast Guard has put out the following press release on the incident.

MORGAN CITY, La. -- The Coast Guard is responding Friday to an overturned mobile inland drilling unit (MIDU) in the Charenton navigational canal south of Highway 90.

The MIDU has a 20,000-gallon diesel fuel capacity, and while there is no current estimate on how much fuel was on board at the time of the incident, on-scene Coast Guard pollution investigators have determined that the rig is not leaking fuel at this time. As a precaution, 500 feet of containment boom has been deployed around the rig, with an additional 500 feet arriving to provide a secondary string within the canal.

The Coast Guard has established a safety zone 1,000 yards on either side of the incident, prohibiting vessel traffic from entering the area without permission from the Captain of the Port. A salvage plan is currently being developed for Coast Guard approval.

There are no reported injuries and the Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the incident.

A mobile Inland drilling unit, according to the website Oilgasglossary.com is:

A drilling rig that is used exclusively to drill offshore exploration and development wells and that floats upon the surface of the water when being moved from one drill site to another. It may or may not float once drilling begins. Two basic types of mobile offshore drilling units are used to drill most offshore wildcat wells: bottom-supported drilling rigs and floating drilling rigs.

Comments

[dnvdeb]

12:24 PM on 05/04/2010

Is it possible that the explosion of the oi rig is not an accident?

[boston997]

01:34 PM on 05/04/2010

I think George Bush did it. Everything else is his fault, why not this.

[boston997]

12:03 PM on 05/04/2010

Drill baby, drill.

[tyger]

07:33 PM on 05/03/2010

We are doomed

[jayes]

04:44 PM on 05/03/2010

My favorite alternative fuel vehicles:

[Nissan Leaf - electric]
http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index

[Honda Civic GX - natural gas]
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/

[Toyota Yaris D-4D* / Jetta TDI - diesel]
http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/road-tests/toyota/toyota-yaris-d-4d
http://tdi.vw.com/clean-diesel-vehicles/
(use a lot less oil, biodiesel compatible)

*not available here, but could be

[stylestorymedia]

01:14 PM on 05/03/2010

BP, Goldman Sachs and Sarah Palin all have a penchant for big bucks, not so much for truth or public well-being. All are in desperate need of new branding.

Read my thoughts here:
http://stylestorymedia.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/of-branding-and-goldman-sachs-sarah-palin-and-bp/

[rf dude]

12:33 AM on 05/03/2010

DANG - can somebody show them folks which end if them things stays UP, forgoshsakes...

[terry63]

10:53 PM on 05/02/2010

With freinds like this, Who needs terrorist's

[Star2000dancer]

08:55 PM on 05/02/2010

This opting to be the biggest economic disaster in history.

[lioness39]

10:30 AM on 05/02/2010

Has anyone ever seen the movie, Soylent Green? This may be off topic but that was the most depressing film I ever saw and I am thinking of it quite often these days.

[GlenRast]

08:15 PM on 05/02/2010

A classic scifi flick. One can only hope it doesn't end up being as prophetic as some others have been. I bet Dick Cheney drooled over the 'scoops' though.

[Star2000dancer]

08:51 PM on 05/02/2010

Sickening. It was on you tube.

[harmandi]

10:10 AM on 05/02/2010

We are destroying this world with our plastic existence. One day we will wake up and try to do something about it when too late.

[GlenRast]

08:18 PM on 05/02/2010

How much of that computer you're posting from do you think is made from petroleum products? I bet it's at least 25%

[Star2000dancer]

08:52 PM on 05/02/2010

Fanned

[Dexterplastic]

06:58 AM on 05/02/2010

well, I am so upset that I ...oops...I just spilled my coffee. Let me sop this up.
Like I was saying, this is the worst, I don't know how...oh 'eck...I just spilled orange juice on my cat..."Come here baby, it's ok..."

Like I was saying, we need to wean ourselves....oops....there goes the oatmeal.
(Not funny, but it sure beats crying. Which is what I do if I look at oily animal pictures. I CAN not stand it.)

we are all in this together. I'm gonna make some bagged tea now....
oops...

[Dianekkdi]

08:58 AM on 05/02/2010

Now, I know why I spilled all that stuff the other day. Thankfully, I missed my cat.

Tis a shame, but the ooops is stll too easy and every body cries... The idea that Halliburton might be concerned about their reputation is ludicrous. What reputation? And why is it Halliburton again? They changed their name to KBR. Was just part of the company? A new umbrella? How do umbrellas work for protection against oil spills? Do you hold it upside down? Spill tea? Say oops?...Just asking.

[Star2000dancer]

08:56 PM on 05/02/2010

BP is owned by England, they say.

[Lahonda]

03:19 AM on 05/02/2010

You'd think the multi-hundred-billion dollar multinational oil industry that actually profits off this commodity would have had the good sense God gave a dog to build some "fire-trucks" for this community of hundreds of deep drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, they chose to invest in massive lobbying to influence legislation AWAY from such safety or disaster contingencies.

The president can't swim that deep, no how! All of American industry needs to act on this matter, now! We need some new ideas to repair this?

[Star2000dancer]

08:54 PM on 05/02/2010

I knew GWBush was purposelt trying to destroy our country, but this is England's oil rig.

[Lahonda]

10:03 PM on 05/02/2010

They're an incestuous lot! The international oil conglomerates should be held collectively responsible.

[RadGash]

12:53 AM on 05/02/2010

Remember the Native American Indians and how they lived successfully for thousands of years? Well folks... the DREAM IS OVER. it is time to get back to community living again. It is time we stop traveling around the world on a whim, it is time we stop living an hour from our work, and it is time we stop depending upon trucked in food to live on. All the signs say this excessive American lifestyle we have is driving this nation and the earth to an early grave. God help us that it may not be too late..

[Star2000dancer]

08:57 PM on 05/02/2010

True that. Fanned

[Lore Splitt]

02:58 PM on 05/03/2010

I don't know about anyone else- but, here in Brooklyn we have a large amount of the NYC population and there just aren't enough jobs for everyone within an hour away from work. Not depending on trucked in food is fine in communities where it's warm year round, and they don't have large populations, so growing one's own food is feasable- but there's not much farmland here in NYC.

And spreading out to the parts of the US that are empty, and there's plenty of land that is, just look up night shots of the country... Who's going to want to give up contact with relatives and such to move to the middle of nowhere, when those places don't even have running water or electricity yet. Would have to tear down forests and all to make the room for us too-

I also think international travel is a positive thing. It has the possibility to open people's eyes to cultures that are not their own. It personalizes international issues, and makes it happen to "real people", not just images on TV.

It would be impossible to live the way you say today. It would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions world wide if everyone was to change to that system. It would have been better if we stuck with that- but we didn't.

[x27]

11:21 PM on 05/01/2010

Rolling Stones_You can't always get what you want-Live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7knIi3LGf4M

[poonchkie]

09:56 PM on 05/01/2010

My heart goes out to the people of the Gulf Coast and the living creatures that will be decimated by the encroaching terror. As an Alaskan I know how the oil companies will treat the victims of their greed. Exxon spent hundreds of millions to deny compensation to the victims and drug out the litigation for over 20 years and then only paying a miserly 20k to the few who lived long enough to collect anything. Bushes Supreme court reduced the awards at the behest of their Corporate masters. Most of the fishing businesses collapsed and the people were left bankrupt. If President Obama thinks BP will take resposibility and pay their fair share he is naive at best, powerless at worse. The recent Supreme court ruling giving Corporation unlimited spending power to control our elections will gurantee one thing, the Corporations will win and those who make too much of a fuss can be deemed "enemy combatants" and picked up by military contractors and shipped to a corporate run prison.

Efficient high mileage vehicles are in operation around the world, in many places you can't sell a vehicle that gets less than the mandated MPG. In the US such legislation was regularly killed by both the auto industry and the oil industry.

[madame48]

09:59 PM on 05/01/2010

as long as our reps have to do the dialing for dollars to gete elected this will continue. We must demand public financed elections with time limits/spending limits....or this country is doomed...As an old lady I have seen a lot of change in this country...much of it for the worse...as in the $$$$ elections

[poonchkie]

10:09 PM on 05/01/2010

Exactly. I'm in my 50's and I seen election campaigns get longer and more expensive to the point of ludacracy. The only people who can afford to campaign are those backed by big money. The notion that Corporations can police themselves sounded stupid to begin with but the populous ran with it. Collapsed mines, exploding wells, leaking tankers, financial collapse, poison air, killer prescription drugs, I mean the list goes on and on. All the while you still have people callling for less Government oversight. Well people, WE are the government and if we delegate our responsibilities to Corporate bought politicians our children and their children will suffer even more.

But don't worry, this story will fade into the recesses of the news cycle and we'll be back to abortion, Mexicans and terrorists in no time. Look how quickly Katrina faded and those poor people are still hurting.

[Pleroma]

11:02 PM on 05/01/2010

We now have another massive opportunity for Obama to demonstrate, as he has so often failed to do, that elections matter. Other than who gets the bigger checks, of course.