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Within a few minutes of the first reports of yet another explosion in the Gulf, I was in a cab and headed for the airport. New Orleans and Louisiana remains an area that I know well, for so many reasons and so many stories. As this story began to unfold, I had my Blackberry, iPhone and cell phone all on overdrive. Following the latest info posted below, you'll find a Twitter timeline as I headed to the airport and then landed in Kenner.

What we know so far is this....a fire occurred on a production platform owned by Mariner Energy located in Vermillion Bay Block 380, approximately 102 miles off the coast of Louisiana. It's an area I have flown over while covering the BP oil spill as we went out to land on a platform. This production platform was producing oil and gas at or near the time of the fire, but it was not a drilling rig or a so-called “oil rig.”

These production platforms essentially act as pumping stations moving oil and gas from its source to a pipeline for transportation and I am told this explosion was not directly related to the oil operations and that may be why we are being told that oil has not yet been found in the Gulf from this disaster.
One of our contacts in the industry tells us that production platforms do not have blowout preventers like drilling rigs since production platforms are not engaged in offshore drilling, they instead have shut-in and safety valves, which according to Mariner Energy, were activated at the time of this disaster.
Meantime, the 13 men all survived and one of them can now make his son's birthday on Saturday...what an amazing story of survival. In fact, the fire had burned some of the life vests and so 12 men linked together in the water to keep the 13th man afloat and safe since there were only 12 vests available. They floated together as a team in the Gulf until being plucked out by the Coast Guard.