The Texas Petroleum Investment Co. platform in Breton Sound Block 21, near the southeastern Louisiana coast, evacuated 28 workers without injury after the compressor fire, according to a U.S. Coast Guard statement. A Coast Guard boat crew was fighting the blaze, and a 1.4-mile rainbow sheen was “drifting southwest of the platform.”

The platform gathers crude from about 50 to 60 wells and sends it to shore by pipeline, David Marguiles, a spokesman for the Houston-based company, said by e-mail. There were about 100 barrels of crude in storage on the platform at the time of the fire.

The fire occurred in Louisiana waters, Eileen Angelico, spokeswoman for U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said by e-mail. The Coast Guard and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources responded to the incident, she said.

Louisiana’s offshore crude production averaged about 14,000 barrels a day in March, according to state data. Total Gulf production in federal waters, which are more than three miles from the coast, was 1.46 million barrels a day in February, according to the Energy Information Administration.

While the lost output is just a fraction of the U.S. total, the blaze happening in the same week that a pipeline spill coated beaches in Southern California with crude will heighten awareness of industry accidents, Carl Larry, head of oil and gas for Frost & Sullivan LP, said by phone from Houston.

“It’s not so much the lost production, it’s the responsibility around it, whether its environmental or safety,” Larry said. “These events have people on edge right now.”

Source: www.nola.com

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