Louisiana, Gulf Of Mexico | featured news

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.

An offshore oil rig has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, west of the site of the April blast that caused a massive oil spill.

The federal government has reopened 4,281 square miles of federal waters off the coast of western Louisiana to commercial and recreational fishing, according to Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As engineers bore deeper into the seafloor toward the source of the oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP PLC is growing more confident that the relief well it expects to complete in August will succeed where all previous efforts to contain or kill the gusher have failed.

But what if it doesn't work?

At the very least, oil would continue to spill while workers try something else.

That proposition would surely bring more misery for the people who live, work and play along the shores from Louisiana to Florida.

April 20, 2010 - Explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd's drilling rig Deepwater Horizon licensed to BP; 11 workers are killed. The rig was drilling in BP's Macondo project 42 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, beneath about 5000 feet of water and ...