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"  At least two people are dead and four injured from an  oil rig explosion off the coast of Grand Isle, Louisiana today. Workers reportedly were cutting a pipe which may have caused the explosion, which sparked in a fire. The production rig, owned by Black Elk Energy of Houston, Texas, was not producing oil at the time, sources says, and no leak is suspected.  The timing of this blast is certainly strange. It echoes the BP spill disaster, and that event just passed its own milestone. BP said on Thursday it would pay a $4.5 billion dollar penalty for releasing 4.9 million barrels of crude oil (that&amp;#039;s $918 dollars per barrel, if you&amp;#039;re counting) into the Gulf of Mexico. (See PM&amp;#039;s complete coverage of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. As part of the largest criminal settlement in US history, BP will also plead guilty to 14 criminal charges, and that does not include the charges leveled at three individual BP employees. The Justice Department has charged the two top officials present on the rig with manslaughter for the deaths of 11 crewmembers, and BP&amp;#039;s former VP for Gulf of Mexico exploration, David Rainey, with obstructing Congress by understating the rate of oil leakage after the rig exploded and sank. BP itself, the Pentagon&amp;#039;s biggest fuel supplier and the second largest oil company in Europe, is charged with negligence in preventing or mitigating the spill as well as misleading Congress and investors about the severity of the situation. As oil gushed from the seafloor, Rainey continued to claim that 5000 barrels of oil were flowing into the gulf each day. Scientists later estimated 60,000 barrels per day during that period, 12 times as much as Rainey said. The $4.5 billion settlement, to be paid out over five years, includes criminal fines and compensation for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences. But the payments won&amp;#039;t end here. BP claims it had already spent $24 billion on cleanup, restoration, and payouts to affected individuals and businesses, and a pending settlement with the Gulf seafood industry and medical claims would cost the company another $7.8 billion. BP could still owe up to $31 billion in fines for violating the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act, and without a settlement BP could find itself in court in February over those claims. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a8492/while-bp-settles-for-billions-another-gulf-oil-explosion-14742235/?click=pm_latest>