AP: An offshore petroleum rig exploded and was burning Friday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay. The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the explosion, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the site around 9 a.m. CDT. All 13 people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent of the injury was not known. Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau says seven Coast Guard helicopters, two airplanes and three cutters were ...

AP: An offshore oil rig has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, west of the site of the April blast that caused the massive oil spill. Coast Guard Petty Officer Casey Ranel says the blast was reported by a commercial helicopter company about 9:30 a.m. CDT Thursday. Seven helicopters, two airplanes and four boats are en route to the site, about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay along the central Louisiana coast. Ranel says it hasn't been determined whether the structure is a production ...

Reuters: BP Plc said it had begun removing a cap from equipment atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Thursday, the first of several steps in advance of plugging the leak for good. "We expect that to happen this afternoon," spokesman Scott Dean said. The cap has shut off all oil flow from the leak since July 15. Once it is gone, BP can remove a failed blowout preventer and replace it with another before plugging the leak through a relief well. (Reporting by Kristen Hays; ...

Reuters: The U.S. Coast Guard was flying helicopters to a possible offshore drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Helicopters were an hour away from the site of the possible explosion, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Prentice Danner.

AP: An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, west of the site where BP's undersea well spilled after a rig explosion. The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the blast, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the area Thursday morning. All 13 people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent of the injury was not known. Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau ...

New Era: The decline in Namibia's fish resources is a result of environmental conditions and failed recovery of the resources despite conservative management strategies, says Beau Tjizoo of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources. "Warm events" that have occurred since 1995 have increased along the coast in recent years. This has led to the displacement and mortality of fish species. Reporting to the ongoing meeting of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis ...

AFP: Two Greenpeace activists will face possible jail terms in Japan on Monday for stealing a box of whale meat in a trial the environmental group says will test the country's limits on political activism. Prosecutors have demanded 18-month prison sentences for each defendant, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, on charges of trespass and theft, in a case that started more than two years ago with their arrests in dramatic Tokyo police raids. The two activists admit taking the box of ...

AFP: Scottish oil exploration group Cairn Energy said Thursday it had resumed operations on a rig off the coast of Greenland after Greenpeace ended a protest. "Cairn can confirm that operations have started again on the Stena Don (oil rig), where safety remains Cairn's priority in this drilling exploration activity," the group said in a statement. "The actions taken by Greenpeace remain a matter for the Greenlandic authorities." Four Greenpeace activists had climbed onto the ...

Guardian: Four Greenpeace activists who halted drilling by a British-owned oil exploration rig off Greenland have been arrested after they abandoned their occupation because of severe weather. Greenlandic police arrested the four after high winds buffeted the Stena Don drilling rig overnight, forcing them to abandon mountaineering-style platforms they had suspended by ropes underneath the platform less than 48 hours earlier. Morten Nielsen, deputy head of Greenland police, said the four ...

AP: The image of thick crude gushing from a blown-out oil well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico was turned off when a tightly fitting cap was secured on top a month-and-a-half ago. Engineers weren't expecting that sight again Thursday when they planned to delicately remove the cap as a prelude to raising the massive piece of equipment underneath that failed to prevent the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. But the government wasn't offering a guarantee no more oil would ...

Reuters: Visitors and some residents were evacuated from low-lying holiday islands off the North Carolina coast yesterday as Hurricane Earl bore down on the US eastern seaboard, churning up dangerous swells. Earl, still a major (Category 3) hurricane, weakened slightly overnight as it swept across the Atlantic east of the Bahamas. It was on track to approach North Carolina's coast early tomorrow, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said. The second major hurricane of the season was ...

BBC: Evacuations have begun in areas of the US East Coast likely to be hit by Hurricane Earl. The hurricane strengthened to a category four storm again, generating sustained winds of 215km/h (135mph). President Barack Obama said officials needed to be ready for a "worst case" scenario in a call to the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). One island in North Carolina's Outer Banks is being evacuated and visitors are being asked to leave another. The narrow ...

Reuters: BP Plc expects to remove a failed blowout preventer atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well by Saturday or Sunday and later plug the leak for good, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Wednesday. "We believe in the next 24 to 36 hours, we will enter a weather window that will allow us to proceed," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a briefing in Houston. Rough seas near the Macondo well site on Monday suspended work to remove the giant stack ...

National Public Radio: Work should resume later this week to remove the temporary sealing cap and failed blowout preventer from BP's busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, the government's point man on the spill said Wednesday. Rough seas have delayed underwater operations intended to kill the well. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said that when conditions are calmer, BP will bring up the current stack of pipes and valves, and put a new blowout preventer atop the well. "We are making preparations ...

National Geographic: Could pollutants from the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico end up as far north as New England? That could happen if a hurricane or tropical storm hits the Gulf region and moves northward. Siddhartha Mitra, Geochemist, East Carolina University "On land, no one's really though about the effect of material coming over from the ocean, marine areas onto land." Geochemist Sid Mitra, from East Carolina University, is studying how far hydrocarbons, released as the oil ...

AP: A federal judge who overturned the Obama administration's initial six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling has rejected the government's bid to have the court challenge thrown out. Government lawyers argued that a lawsuit filed by several offshore service companies over the May 28 moratorium was moot because the Interior Department imposed a new, temporary drilling ban on July 12. But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman rejected that argument Wednesday, saying the second ...

Reuter: A federal judge in New Orleans rejected on Wednesday the U.S. government's request to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its original 6-month deepwater drilling moratorium. Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc and other oil companies sued the government when it first ordered a halt to deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in May after BP Plc's well rupture that killed 11 workers and caused the world's worst offshore spill. The drilling halt was subsequently amended, so the government ...

AFP: Energy giant BP spent more than 93 million dollars on advertising in the three months after the April 20 Gulf oil spill, triple what it spent over the same period in 2009, US lawmakers said Wednesday. Leaders of a key US House of Representatives Committee said the embattled firm, still reeling from the disaster's impact, told them Monday that it had shelled out 93.4 million dollars on ads from the spill through July 2010. "This is more than three times the amount the company ...

Reuters: A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the U.S. government's request to dismiss an industry lawsuit challenging its deepwater oil and gas drilling moratorium, dealing another blow to the Obama administration. Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc and other drilling companies sued the administration on June 7 after it first ordered a halt to deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following BP Plc's well rupture that killed 11 workers and caused the world's worst offshore oil spill. As ...

redOrbit: Mandatory evacuations have gone up for visitors along parts of North Carolina's coastal islands on Wednesday as Hurricane Earl continues its path toward the eastern seaboard of the United States, churning up dangerous swells. Earl weakened slightly overnight as it moved across the Atlantic east of the Bahamas. It is still a strong Category 3 hurricane and is on track to approach the North Carolina coast early Friday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Earl had ...