Crews yet to plug leaking gas well off Louisiana coast

A natural gas well off the Louisiana coast that went out of control and prompted evacuation hasn't been plugged till Friday, local media reported. Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Coast Guard continued Friday to oversee efforts to kill the wild well, local daily newspaper the Times-Picayune reported. BSEE officials were in the final stages of reviewing a response plan submitted by the well's owner, EnVen Energy Ventures of Metairie, on Friday afternoon, according to the report. EnVen plans to pump weighted drilling fluids into the well in order to apply pressure and stop the flow of natural gas, what's known as a "dynamic kill." Crews were expected to start the process later Friday. The blowout happened Thursday morning when workers were drilling on a jack-up rig at the well site about 170 km southwest of Lafayette, a major city in south Louisiana. The rig was then evacuated and gas was diverted overboard as the crew works to kill the well. No injuries were reported. A platform that was producing oil and gas near the EnVen rig was shut down as a precaution. No visible sheen has been sighted and no pollution has reached the Gulf of Mexico, the company said. Wild natural gas wells are typically less of an environmental threat than offshore oil well blowouts like the one that led to the massive BP oil spill. On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon drill platform caught fire and exploded, killing 11 workers and triggering one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history.