No sheen near Gulf of Mexico platform after fire

Following the last week’s platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard said on Monday it was no longer responding to the incident site.

The Coast Guard last week responded to the site of an oil production platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana.

“The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement reported that there were no hotspots or major pollution threats aboard the platform.Over flights were conducted on January 9 with no reports of sheening on the water. The cause of the incident is under investigation by BSEE,” the Coast Guard said on Monday.

As for the incident itself, the Ship Shoal 266 A platform owned by Renaissance Offshore caught fire around early morning on Thursday.

There were four people aboard the platform at the time of the incident.

In an e-mail to Offshore Energy Today last week, Renaissance Offshore said initial efforts had been made by the crew to extinguish the fire. However, the decision was then made to discontinue those efforts and abandon the platform due to heavy smoke.

“All four crew members onboard safely evacuated from the platform aboard a life raft and were recovered by a field vessel that had been dispatched to the location. The crew has arrived safely onshore and it has been confirmed that they suffered no injuries,” Renaissance said last week.

According to Renaissance, the fire was completely extinguished at approximately 5:50 am CST Thursday.

BSEE said last week that as a result of the fire, production had been shut in on both the A and B platforms, which are co-located and operated by Renaissance. The 10 wells on Platform A and seven on Platform B were shut in prior to the operators’ evacuation.

Offshore Energy Today Staff