Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.
You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.
The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.
As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.
It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.
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The reason we didn't hear about it was because it was in the Caspian Sea. "Big Oil" has spills all over the globe. We (US citizens) just haven't cared because we weren't affected until last April.
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