HOUSTON (ICIS)--A fuel oil tanker grounded offshore after colliding with an mobile drilling unit near Port Aransas on the Texas coast, the US Coast Guard said on Wednesday.

There were no reports of injuries or significant pollution, and the Aransas Pass Channel remains open to traffic, the Coast Guard said.

The collision occurred when the FR8 Pride lost power while heading inbound in the channel and drifted into the Rowan EXL-1, a mobile offshore drilling unit, the Coast Guard said.

Tugboats helped the tanker disengage itself from the rig, which suffered significant damage, the Coast Guard said.

Aransas Pass is the major waterway for ocean-going traffic going into and out of the port of Corpus Christi.

The tanker’s crew reported flooding in a forward ballast space, but they controlled it and were able to ground the vessel two miles (3.2km) offshore, the Coast Guard said.

Authorities deployed teams of offshore vessel inspectors, port state control examiners, marine casualty investigators and pollution responders.

The Coast Guard is investigating the collision.

 

With enemies like Armendariz, who needs friends?

By Editorial Board

Originally published 03:00 a.m., May 1, 2012
Updated 06:00 a.m., May 1, 2012

CORPUS CHRISTI — The environment lost a friend and protector with the abrupt resignation of EPA Region 6 administrator Al Armendariz. The relentless pursuers of his removal should admit as much, if there is any honor among them.

Armendariz, who oversaw Texas and four neighboring states, submitted his resignation Sunday after ill-advised comments he made two years ago surfaced last week in a video. Armendariz, trying to assuage residents of the tiny North Texas town of Dish who feared ill effects from drilling, told them the EPA would make examples of bad actors. It was the best that his outnumbered agency could do.

He likened the strategy to the Roman method of subduing an unruly village by crucifying a few of the inhabitants. Admittedly a poor choice of words, not meant to be taken literally.

Predictably, his detractors took those words as severely out of context as possible. They portrayed his speech as proof of a job-killing, anti-industry conspiracy. They couldn't have written him a better script to serve their purposes.

Just as predictably, he resigned, saying he "had become too much of a distraction."

Actually, he was pretty much a distraction from the get-go. According to the Dallas Observer, "Before SMU prof Al Armendariz had even warmed the seat at his post as EPA regional chief, he was pilloried as an activist whose research into the air pollution caused by fracking operations made him unfit to run a five-state office overseeing some of the industry's most important drilling grounds."

The pillorying didn't stop on his way out the door. Sen. James Inhofe, who released the video last week as his version of proof of an EPA assault on the energy industry, issued this statement Monday:

"We will continue our investigation into the situations surrounding EPA's apparent crucifixion victims: the American people deserve to know why, in at least three separate cases, EPA tarnished the reputation of companies by accusing them of water contamination; then when the results of their study did not turn out the way they hoped, and they had no definitive evidence to make that link, they quietly walked back their accusations. We will get to the bottom of this ... ."

Since 1989, the Innocence project has exonerated 289 wrongly convicted people who averaged 13.5 years in prison. Since 2009, Inhofe can cite three companies who suffered the indignity of waiting for the water tests to come back.

Imagine if Inhofe, other politicians and those industry "crucifixion victims" devoted the ample resources at their disposal to righting real miscarriages of justice such as those suffered by the innocently convicted, instead of trying to squelch environmental enforcement. In Texas alone, Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott have used state government resources to sue the EPA and to issue incendiary news releases against it.

It's unfortunate that Armendariz will be remembered for his "crucify" statemen t. He should be remembered first and foremost as a listener. He did a lot of that during his visits to Corpus Christi. He listened tirelessly to industry advocates and detractors.

While his critics feared the reaches of his agency, he knew it to be limited. Only operators of the older, dirtier coal-fired power plants needed to worry under his watch.

If he was the enemy of fracking and of prosperity that his critics have portrayed, then the EPA doesn't make Legionnaires like the Romans did. No one who has visited drilling sites in the Eagle Ford Shale would guess that fracking was under siege.

Not like Al Armendariz was under siege.