you know, it s an inherently dangerous business that they do, and, you know, the coast guard helps them make sure their safety procedures are in place, and there s 30,000 of these workers every day that go out to the gulf to do this work, and they re well trained and they work to try not to have these accidents, but on this day something went wrong, and now, you know, we re working with bp and transocean to try to find the cause. we re working on that investigation and we re going to so, you know, it doesn t happen again and also make sure we can control that pollution and do everything we can to help find those 11 missing crew members. transocean is the contractor. they have leased that the oil production from that vessel to bp. michael, will you stay with me for a second, please? absolutely. hang on. we ll take a quick break. we ll be back with michael oberry chief petty officer with the u.s. coast guard in a second for an update. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 investment firms wouldn
has now sunk. this was a concern. we are getting more information about this. you re looking at pictures. these are taped pictures earlier of the battle to try and get that under control. but the deep water horizon, the name of the rig, operated by trans ocean been on behalf of bp, deep water horizon has sunk in the gulf of mexico. this is in modern times outside of a hurricane, lately, almost unheard of. there have been accidents, there have been fires, there have been some fatalities over the years. first of all, we have not seen an explosion or a mass i incident on a rig outside of a hurricane for some time. but to see a rink a rig actually go down into the ocean is a very, very serious and concerning matter. we re going to discuss the impact that has on safety in the water and offshore rigs. we re going to bring back some of our experts on that. we do have it now from the u.s. coast guard the oil rig has sunk in the gulf of mexico.
more offshore oil drilling. is there something about rig wes should know about? obviously complicated pieces of equipment that are working in very dangerous environments. this particular rig is one of the newer ones and certainly the company trans ocean, the biggest driller and they ve got a pretty good record of safety. the rigs themselves, it s dangerous, dirty work. they re working in extreme conditions with extreme pressure. any time you stick a pipe into the earth thousands of feet, you re dealing with a lot of pressure. of course, the hydro carbon. just by the nature, it s dangerous. this is a newer unit. there are a lot of older out there on the ocean as well. there s also a lot of investment in the last five, ten years or so and new equipment. one thing to take an issue with my description of it, i ve spent time on a rig and they have a lot of safety briefings. every shift gets a safety briefing. they ve got firefighting crews on every rig because they know that help is not
this. thank you for great input on that. we ll be back with bob and peter in the next hour. there really are remarkable issues. in the meantime, send me your comments on twitter and facebook. the questions you want those guys to answer so that you can understand this better because it s going to come to a vote. it may pass. this may become the law of the land. you need to know about it. i want to bring you back to a major news story, breaking news that that oil rig in the gulf of mexico that we ve been following has sunk. that is an oil rig that is run by the company trans ocean. they are a contractor. it s called the deep water horizons about 50 miles off the coast of louisiana. we re getting more information but the coast guard has confirmed that rig has gone down into the ocean. we ll bring you more about that on the other side of the break.
equipment that is brought in to do all the work. the coast guard has the institutional knowledge to be able to, you know, make sure that it s cleaned up appropriately, and bp will be the one bringing in all the equipment to make sure that happens. and bp told yesterday they re sending seven oil-response vehicles into the area. by the way, this rig would have been about $600 million. it is about twice the size of two football fields. this particular rig earned a safety award from the department of the interior last year which manages leases in the gulf of mexico. let me just ask you this, tom. this is this company, transocean, so here s how it works. oil companies like bp generally speaking lease drilling and oil production equipment? yeah. the rigs in particular, yeah. i mean, once you re doing production, you re more likely to own or co-own that asset. but, yeah, you ll hire a company like transocean to go out and they ve got the expertise to actually doing the drilling and th