One man was still missing late Friday afternoon after a natural gas drilling rig, operating about 26 miles south of Freeport, TX, had what the companies involved called a “well control incident” in the pre-dawn hours. Global Marine Inc. and Marine Drilling Cos., which had 40 people on the rig, reported that 37 men and two women were evacuated from Marine Drilling’s “Marine 4” rig in two lifeboats following the blowout.. A supervisor was reportedly missing, and aggressive search operations were under way by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The rig was drilling an exploratory well for Applied Drilling Technology Inc., a subsidiary of Global Marine Inc. in Brazos Block 417 when the incident occurred. The cause was unknown, according to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Patrick Montgomery. Following the incident, emergency crews were having trouble getting to the rig because the well was spewing gas and water into the air. Rigs can experience incidents for several reasons, including hitting discoveries that conventional equipment cannot control.

According to the companies, the rig was evacuated around 4:30 a.m. Friday. Searching for the missing employee “is our highest priority at this time,” they said in a written statement. His family had been notified, but his name was being withheld. They said that “to our knowledge, there have been no serious injuries to the 39 people” who were taken to shore aboard an offshore support vessel.

The captain of one of the boats that helped in the rescue reportedly saw flares go up on the platform and headed for the rig to assist. Reportedly, the man who was still missing had helped the other crew members escape, and he was unsure if the man jumped off or couldn’t get off the rig.

In a statement, the companies said that “contrary to earlier reports in the media, no fire occurred.” An incident management team was deployed on Friday, and was working with the U.S. Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service to assess the situation. The companies disclosed that a light sheen of an unidentified substance had been detected on the surrounding water’s surface, and that both well control and pollution control specialists were going to the vicinity of the rig to begin a well control plan. The U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Galveston said it would investigate.

As of Friday afternoon, the companies had not been able to assess the rig’s damage because they had been unable to board the rig. The Marine 4 is a mat-supported jack up that was built in 1975. It capable of drilling to a depth of 25,000 feet in a maximum water depth of 250 feet.

Houston-based Global Marine is an international offshore drilling contractor whose fleet includes jack ups, semi-submersibles and ultra-deepwater drillships. It also is a leading provider of drilling management services, including turnkey, project management and daywork drilling. Marine Drilling, headquartered in Sugar Land, outside of Houston, is an offshore drilling contractor with 18 rigs, including nine mat-supported rigs, in the Gulf of Mexico: two deepwater semi-submersibles and 15 jack ups, with another jack up configured as an accommodation unit.

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