Coast Guard reports fire at Gulf oil platform

The U.S. Coast Guard is responding to a fire at an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana, officials announced Friday.

A supply vessel reported a fire at an oil rig in Breton Sound at 2:50 a.m. Friday morning, the Coast Guard said in a statement. All 28 workers at the station were evacuated safely, the well was shut down and production there has ceased.  

{mosads}A Coast Guard plane later spotted a 1.4-mile “rainbow sheen” drifting around the platform, but officials didn’t say what was responsible for it. 

The platform has about 4,000 barrels of oil in its storage tanks, officials said. A spokesman for Texas Petroleum Investment Co., the company that owns the platform, told the Times-Picayune that the station is responsible for gathering oil and pumping it through a pipeline.

“Our company is working with the Coast Guard and other agencies to address any environmental issues that develop,” the spokesman told the paper. “All of the workers on the platform were safely evacuated and there were no injuries in this incident.” 

A boat crew and an aircraft are on the scene, the Coast Guard said, “with additional vehicles en route.”