An explosion on a floating drilling platform located in 210 kilometers southeast of New Orleans (Louisiana), there was a week ago. Shortly after the explosion, the platform on which at the time of the accident employed 126 people, sank. 17 people in the accident were injured, 11 are still unaccounted for. The collapse of the BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 km from the coast of Louisiana was more dangerous than initially estimated. Oil continues to gush at depth, and the cessation of leakage may take another three months. On Wednesday, the Coast Guard conducted several controlled fires as possible damage to the coast considered more serious than the environmental damage from the smoke of burning in a sea of oil. Stop the leakage of oil from wells at a depth of 1.5 km so far failed.
According to earlier reports on the release of 1000 barrels of oil a day, but now found a new source of the leak and it is already estimated at 5000 barrels (800,000 liters) per day, said yesterday at a news conference, Rear Admiral U.S. Coast Guard, Mary Landry. The head of the Canadian company to fight the fires in the oil fields of Safety Boss, Mike Miller, the BBC said that a catastrophe comparable in scale with the fires in Kuwait during the Gulf War of 1991 and the sinking of the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989, BP daily spends $ 6 million for clean-up and attempts to stop the leakage by four underwater robots.
