The Echo Platform of Fieldwood Energy, located 12 miles off the New Orleans coast, exploded on Thursday afternoon. The blast killed one person and injured three more, but the rig was not in production at that time, so there was no pollution since any damage caused by the incident has been contained.

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Fieldwood, based in Houston, said the dead and one of the injured victims were the employees of a contractor. It did not identify the two others who were hurt and how bad their injuries are, but said the three injured people were brought to a land-based medical facility, reports the New York Daily News.

Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich, coroner of Jefferson Parish, identified the dead as Jerrel Hancock, 24. He is a superintendent of Turnkey Cleaning Service, the father of two children and a resident of Abbeville. Turnkey specializes in cleaning offshore rigs and was contracted by Fieldwood to clean Echo Platform.

The U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement are jointly probing the cause of the blast at the platform which was in 220 feet of water. The Echo Platform is in the West Delta Field near the Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

Although the Deepwater Horizon accident at the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 that killed 11 rig workers and injured 16 others is the biggest accidental marine oil spill in the world and the largest environmental disaster in the United States, fatal rig accidents that lead to major pollution in the Gulf of Mexico are actually rare, according to UPI.

It cited the explosion in 2013 of a natural gas plume in the area that caused the rig owned by Hercules Offshore to collapse, but the accident didn't result in any injuries or major damage to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Riverstone Holdings, a private equity company, owns Fieldwood Energy which it bought from Apache Corp. in July 2013 for $3.75 billion, according to Reuters. In January 2014, Riverstone purchased the Gulf assets of SandRidge Energy for $750 million, making it the biggest player in the shallower continental shelf area of the U.S. Gulf.

TagsGulf of Mexico, Oil rig, Explosion, oil spill