An explosion on an offshore rig killed 11 workers and ruptured a deep-sea well head, which took 84 days to seal.
The North Sea was the scene of the world's worst offshore rig disaster, the Piper Alpha explosion, which killed 167 people in 1988.
Through the year, the offshore rig count in North America has grown by around 22%, and this year has seen the highest number of drilling permits issued in the GoM since 2007.
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That was the court's point when it ruled oil worker Joseph Oncale could pursue his suit against three other men he claims harassed and humiliated him, falsely accused him of homosexuality and threatened him with rape when he took a job on an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
In California, an offshore drilling rig stained the coast of Santa Barbara with more than 3 million gallons of crude oil.
Six Greenpeace activists have boarded a Russian offshore oil rig in protest over gas and oil exploration in the Arctic, the group says.
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When an offshore oil rig is outdated, or can no longer cost-effectively pump oil, most countries require that the oil rigs be wholly decommissioned.
Visitors to an offshore drilling rig or production platform receive safety training and are outfitted with steel-toed boots, safety goggles, gloves, hearing protection, and a helmet.
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Chevron sunk an offshore oil rig in 1937 in 14 feet of water and by 1947 drillers were working on rigs out of sight of land.
Furthermore, the average offshore drilling rig is 20 years old.
Other competitors in the energy sector include: Transocean (RIG), Hercules Offshore, Inc. (HERO), and ENSCO (ESV).
The company has operations in 80 countries that are classified into 4 main geographic divisions and competes with Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) and Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI) as well as with Transocean (NYSE: RIG) in the offshore and deepwater sector.
As a precaution, many oil companies were evacuating rig workers and support personnel from offshore installations in the area.
The explosion in April of that year of a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the largest offshore oil spill in the country's history.
The Senate became consumed with health care and then immigration, then only weeks after President Obama announced plans to increase offshore drilling in the U.S. the Deepwater Horizon rig blew.
The London-based company has lost more than a third of its stock-market value since April 20, when one of its gulf wells blew out, destroying the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing 11 men and triggering the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
As of March 28, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcment (BOEMRE) of the Department of the Interior had received 31 deepwater drilling permit applications for offshore drilling activities like water injection wells and drilling from a fixed rig that were still allowed under the moratorium.
Transocean Sedco Forex (44, RIG), Santa Fe International (34, SDC) and Diamond Offshore Drilling (40, DO) are deploying huge fleets of long-idled semisubmersibles.
On May 27, President Barack Obama ordered a six-month offshore drilling moratorium in the wake of the April explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers and started oil gushing into the Gulf.
Bankston, nominated by the United States of America, for placing their own lives at risk while rescuing survivors from the Deepwater Horizon Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit, in the Gulf of Mexico, following a devastating explosion on the rig in April 2010.
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John McCain touts offshore drilling as a solution to producing more oil, and recently held a press conference on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to make his point.
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