Salvage operation goes down a storm

A massive engineering operation has righted BP’s Thunder Horse oil platform, which was left listing after Hurricane Dennis swept the Gulf of Mexico.

The rig, which has a crew of more than 200, was safely evacuated before the storm hit but was listing at up to 30 degrees when vessels returned to the area on 11 July.

Thunder Horse is in the Mississippi Canyon area, 150 miles south-east of New Orleans. It is the largest platform of its type, weighing more than 50,000 tons, and is operated by BP with ExxonMobil.

The rig was expected to have a peak output of 250,000 barrels a day when production began later this year, extracting oil from some of the region’s deepest wells.

The US Coast Guard and BP are working to find the cause of the problem, but the listing is thought to have resulted from excess water entering Thunder Horse’s ballast tanks.