Oil, 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.

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.

A new oil sheen was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, although energy company BP said Thursday the discovery had nothing to do with its operations and was far from the site of its disaster-hit Macondo well.

Oil companies with off-shore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico are taking precautions amid threatening storm forecasts for the area around Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, including the chance of a tropical cyclone.

Exxon disclosed oil-and-gas discoveries that it said rank among the largest in the Gulf of Mexico in the past decade.

In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets, vehicles and gear - much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows....

President Barack Obama will not be allowing new drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least seven years, according to a senior administration official.

Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the blast on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the well was unstable, a commission found.