A natural gas rig off the coast of Venezuela collapsed and sank into the ocean today. And of course there's all kinds of gas leaking into the ocean -- oh wait.
Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told state television that workers disconnected a tube leading from the gas fields to the Aban Pearl platform, preventing any damage to the ocean or marine life. He said alarms went off three hours before the sinking, giving the crew time to evacuate.
Elsewhere, on the Deepwater Horizon, it was evidently like a Three Stooges movie.
WASHINGTON — In the days after an oil well spun out of control in the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the supposedly failsafe device's configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday.
Heckuva and all that.