Gulf Of Mexico | featured news

Divers hired by the owner of an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that caught fire recovered a body in the waters near the site Saturday evening, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and the rig's owner.

Coast Guard crews continued searching for two workers missing after an explosion and fire aboard a Gulf of Mexico oil rig on Friday that was apparently triggered by workers using a blow torch to cut a pipe.

Two people were missing and four people were airlifted to a hospital Friday after an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico some 17 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La., the U.S. Coast Guard told NBC News.

BP will pay approximately $4.5 billion and plead guilty to criminal charges as part of a settlement with the U.S. government over the deadly Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the London-based oil giant announced Thursday.

Oil and natural gas companies are not exploring, developing or producing on more than 20 million acres of federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico, 40 percent of them owned by the five biggest private oil giants, according to a study by the office of Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Oil company BP said Monday it is selling some deep-water assets in the Gulf Mexico to Plains Exploration & Production Co. for $5.55 billion, a big step in the BP's drive to cover the cost of its oil well blowout in the Gulf two years ago and concentrate investment elsewhere.

The Gulf Coast is a hot destination again two years after the massive BP Plc oil spill made the region a tourist dead zone, with the petroleum giant pumping more than $150 million into promotions to help the region recover.

A newly discovered shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico may have originally gone down 200 years ago. The ship is full of glass bottles, ceramic plates and boxes of muskets. The shipwreck was discovered 200 miles (321 kilometers) off the Gulf Coast in more than 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) of water by a Gulf of Mexico mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The wooden hull of the ship has nearly disintegrated, but a greenish copper shell that once protected the ship's wood remains behind.

BP and a committee representing plaintiffs suing over the 2010 Gulf oil spill have reached an estimated $7.8 billion agreement to settle the lawsuit, company officials said late Friday.

A partial settlement of claims made against BP for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is very close, sources tell the BBC.