Crews search for oil worker after explosion

Blast injures seven people on lake near New Orleans.

KENNER, LA. — Authorities searched by air and water Monday for a contractor who disappeared when an oil and gas platform exploded on a lake near New Orleans. Seven people were injured, including three who were in critical condition, authorities said.

The Coast Guard reported that a fire aboard the structure was out by midday and there were no signs of pollution visible from the air. A Coast Guard helicopter, along with Coast Guard vessels and boats from local agencies, continued looking for the missing worker.

The Clovelly Oil Co. platform exploded Sunday night while maintenance was being done on the structure, sending a fireball high into the night sky, authorities and company officials said. The Kenner government Facebook page said authorities on the scene reported that cleaning chemicals had ignited on the structure, but the company said the cause of the blast was unknown. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto said the cause remained under investigation.

Residents along the shores of the lake said their homes shook about 7:15 p.m. Some reported that the air smelled of burning rubber.

“My house actually shook,” Andrew Love, 32, told NOLA.com/The Times Picayune . “At first I thought it was a sonic boom or something, I had no idea what was happening.”

Lopinto said there were no reports of structural damage to any homes.

Five of the injured were hospitalized with “blasttype injuries and burns,” said Mike Guillot, director of East Jefferson Emergency Medical Services. Two of the three people in critical condition were in a burn unit, Guilot said.

A statement from Clovelly Oil said three oil wells near the platform were shut in at the time of the explosion and its one gas well was flowing, but was successfully shut-in shortly after the explosion. Clovelly does not know if any oil was released into the lake.

The platform is a storage and accumulation point for oil and gas from a number of wells, company spokesman Tim O’Leary said.

“It’s basically an underwater storage tank. It takes oil and gas” from wells, he said. Once the tank is filled, the oil or gas is pumped into a barge and moved.

He said the four wells that feed the platform were drilled in the 1970s and are all in the lake, a brackish tidal basin that is fed both by the Gulf of Mexico and by fresh water from rivers and streams in 16 Louisiana parishes and four Mississippi counties.

Its water covers 630 square miles, but it’s generally only about 10 to 15 feet deep. It’s 40 miles long and 25 miles wide.

CHRIS GRANGER / NOLA.COM A Coast Guard helicopter searches for a missing worker around an oil rig in Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans after the rig exploded Sunday.