The Gulf of Mexico is still recovering is still recovering from Deepwater Horizon, the infamous BP oil spill, which desecrated the region six years ago.
(Yahoo)- No luck. There’s oil in the water again, and this time it’s a problem with Shell’s offshore Brutus platform, near which a crude leak has been discovered.
Word came in after a helicopter spotted an oil sheen off the Louisiana coast, about 160 miles south-southwest of New Orleans. As of Saturday morning, nearly 90,000 gallons have escaped into the sea.
There are no offshore drilling activities at Brutus, so chances are the leak is a result of problems with Shell’s Glider Field. That’s the underwater piping configuration, a manifold-like system responsible for connecting the Brutus platform to a cluster of four subsea oil wells.
Federal regulators say that Shell has now shut off all wells running to the platform in order to stop the leak, but not before a 13-mile-long oil slick formed on the water. It’s less than 100 miles south of from Port Fourchon, Louisiana.
At this time, no injuries are reported. Cleanup crews have been dispatched.