Coast Guard searches for 2 after oil platform fire

The four burned workers are in critical but stable condition. Meanwhile, officials said no oil was leaking from the charred platform, a relief for Gulf Coast residents still weary two years after the BP oil spill illustrated the risk offshore drilling poses to the region's ecosystem and economy.

The four workers' burns were not as extensive as initially reported, said Leslie Hoffman, a spokeswoman for Black Elk Energy, which owned the platform. Their conditions Saturday were stable but critical, she said.

Coast Guard officials said in a news release Saturday that helicopters were searching for the missing workers from the air, while a cutter searched the sea.

The images Friday of black smoke billowing from a burning structure in the sea were eerily similar to the Deepwater Horizon blaze that killed 11 workers and led to an oil spill that took months to bring under control. The fire came a day after BP PLC agreed to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the 2010 spill and pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties.

There were a few important differences between this latest blaze and the blaze that touched off the worst offshore spill in U.S. history: Friday's fire at an oil platform about 25 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La., was put out within hours, while the Deepwater Horizon burned for more than a day, collapsed and sank.

The site of Friday's blaze is a production platform in shallow water, rather than an exploratory drilling rig looking for new oil on the seafloor almost a mile deep.

The depth of the well blow-out — a mile below the surface — proved to be a major challenge in bringing the disaster under control.

The Black Elk platform is in 56 feet of water — a depth much easier for engineers to manage if a spill had happened.

A sheen of oil about a half-mile long and 200 yards wide was reported on the Gulf surface, but officials believe it came from residual oil on the platform.