A look at deadly oil industry accidents

[April 22, 2010]  NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Eleven workers were missing after an oil rig explosion off the Louisiana coast. Here's a look at some of the deadliest oil industry accidents in the United States:

• July 29, 1956: Nineteen men were burned to death and 32 others seriously injured in a petroleum tank explosion at a Shamrock Oil and Gas Corp. tank farm near Dumas, Texas.

• June 30, 1964: Twenty-two people died when the C.P. Baker, a catamaran-type drilling barge operated by Pan American Petroleum Corp., suffered a blowout and explosion while drilling a new well in the Gulf of Mexico near Eugene Island, 80 miles off the Louisiana coast. Twenty-one crew members died and 22 were injured. One crew member on a rescue ship also was killed and another injured.

• April 23, 1976: All 12 men aboard were killed when a helicopter crashed into the Gulf of Mexico en route to a Gulf Oil Co. drilling platform. The craft went down 60 miles south of Cameron, La., near the Texas border.

• Dec. 8, 1977: A helicopter carrying Pennzoil Producing Co. employees to an offshore drilling rig 90 miles south of Morgan City, La., in the Gulf of Mexico, crashed while attempting to land and plunged 130 feet into the ocean. Seventeen of the 19 men aboard were killed.

• July 23, 1984: In the suburb of Romeoville, Ill., two huge explosions and a fire at a Union Oil refinery killed 19 people and injured at least 22 others.

• May 5, 1988: In Norco, La., a Shell Oil refinery explosion killed seven workers and injured 42.

• Feb. 23, 1999: A fire at Tosco Corporation's Avon oil refinery in Martinez, Calif., killed four men and seriously injured one.

• March 2004: Ten people died when a helicopter chartered by Unocal crashed about 90 miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas, while heading to a drill ship near South Padre Island.

• March 23, 2005: An explosion at a BP American refinery in Texas City, Texas, killed 15 people and injured another 170.

• Jan. 4, 2009: Eight people died when a Sikorsky helicopter carrying two pilots and seven oil-rig workers employed by Shell Oil Co. contractors went down in a rural Louisiana marsh in Terrebonne Parish, 100 miles Southwest of New Orleans, while en route to a Gulf of Mexico platform. The sole survivor was critically injured.

• April 2, 2010: An explosion and fire at a Tesoro Corp. refinery in Anacortes, Wash., killed six people. One survivor was critically injured.

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Sources: U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB); Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA); AP reporting

[Associated Press]

Compiled by Jennifer Farrar and Julie Reed, AP News Research Center

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