ME Mariner Energy Inc.

An offshore platform owned by Mariner Energy Inc. (ME) caught fire about 100 miles south of Louisiana's Vermilion Bay on Thursday morning, with a light oily sheen around the platform visible from the air, according to the Coast Guard.

Thirteen workers were stranded in the water but were rescued and transferred to another platform, the Coast Guard said in a press release. One of the 13 workers was injured, said Coast Guard Office Petty Officer Casey Ranel. However, Mariner said in a press release that no injuries had been reported, and that no oil or gas was seen spilled during an initial flyover.

The workers are being transported to the Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma, La., according to the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said the explosion took place at about 9:19 a.m. CDT. The agency dispatched nine helicopters, one fixed-wing aircraft and four cutters to the scene. A pilot who reported the incident early on said the platform was engulfed in flames, said Petty Officer Bill Colclough. At around 12:30 p.m. CDT, the Coast Guard said the fire was still burning but under control. The cause has yet to be determined.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Lehmann said that the visible oily sheen measured one nautical mile by 100 feet.

The Mariner Energy platform is one of 634 manned oil-and-gas platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico. According to data posted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the platform, installed in 1980, stands in water 340 feet deep and is manned around the clock. This is much shallower than the deep-water operations brought into the spotlight recently by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

An internal report by the agency said that the platform had about 100 barrels of oil stored on board. A water-blasting and painting crew was on board the platform when the fire occurred.

In the last week of August, the facility produced a daily average of 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas--the equivalent of about 1,600 barrels of oil--and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate, according to Mariner, which is the sole owner of the platform.

The Mariner platform fire comes just over four months after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, driving lawmakers to seek an overhaul of drilling regulations. The Deepwater Horizon incident, which is costing U.K. oil giant BP PLC (BP) billions of dollars, also cast doubt on whether smaller oil companies would be able to handle the expense of responding to offshore accidents.

Small fires aren't rare on older platforms such as the Vermilion 380, often occurring when existing wells are being worked on to boost their capacity, said Ray Kizer, an analyst at energy consultancy IHS. Mariner crews had been active on the platform from mid-June until mid-July, according to Bureau of Ocean Energy Management records. Weekly reports submitted by Mariner show the company in early July reported it was extending the depth of one of the seven wells attached to the platform.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy reported 133 fires or explosions in the Gulf of Mexico in 2009. It said 130 were deemed "incidental," each accounting for at most $25,000 in damages; three were classified as "minor," causing damages between $25,000 to $1 million.

After falling as much as 16% on the news, Mariner Energy shares were recently down 2.3% at $22.82. Houston-based Mariner said that the cause of the fire wasn't known but would be investigated.

Apache Corp. (APA), which said in April it would acquire the company for $2.7 billion, also saw its shares slip, down 1.3% at $91.30 Thursday afternoon. Apache spokesman Bob Dye said that the company still expects to close the acquisition of Mariner later this month or in the two first weeks of October, despite news of the incident. Apache's bid for Mariner would give it its first foothold in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, which in recent years has become a major growth area for big oil companies.

-By Tennille Tracy, Isabel Ordonez and Angel Gonzalez, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6619; tennille.tracy@dowjones.com; 713-547-9201;

(Jason Womack, Brian Baskin, Cassandra Sweet, Isabel Ordonez and The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Ball and Russell Gold contributed to this article.)

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