Rio De Janeiro, Brazil — The world's biggest floating oil rig sank in the South Atlantic on Tuesday, and the state oil company Petrobras said some of the 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board had already started to leak.
A cleanup flotilla of 11 ships with floating barriers and oil-dispersing chemicals surrounded a slick at the spot 75 miles off the coast where the 40-story-tall rig, crippled and listing after an explosion last week, went down in heavy seas.
After a series of explosions Thursday, the P-36 oil rig sank Tuesday morning into the South Atlantic. This image taken from television shows the rig the moment it sank, about 75 miles off the coast of Macae, Brazil.
However, scientists and the government said the environmental impact would not be great, in part because the isolated location of the sunken rig, 75 miles off the coast at a depth of nearly one mile.
Workers who had been trying to save the rig were evacuated to another floating platform after it "shifted suddenly" before dawn, the company said. Divers left two hours before it went under.
About 10:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m. CST, the rig tipped over and sank in about 10 minutes. Film footage showed the platform disappearing into the water until only the green heliport was visible above the waves. Oil workers looked on, many sobbing for comrades who died in the disaster.
Two workers were killed in the explosion, and eight others are missing, presumed dead inside the sunken rig.
Petrobras Chief Executive Henri Philippe Reichstul said all the oil would eventually leak into the sea. He said there was already a "fine film" of diesel oil on the surface.
He said containers holding 312,000 gallons of diesel fuel, would collapse under water pressure on the sea bottom at a depth of 4,455 feet. The rig also had 78,000 gallons of crude most of it in hoses between the wells and the rig. Those hoses were attached when the rig went down and could break, he said.
As barriers were set up around the spill, a second slick was sighted, Petrobras said. It wasn't known whether the new spill was crude or diesel.
"There is a plan in place to protect the environment," Reichstul said. "We are not terribly worried about the environmental question."
Scientists agreed the environmental impact would likely be negligible. The lighter diesel oil tends to evaporate in a few days, while the crude oil would separate and the heavier sediment would sink.
"It would be different if it were in a bay or on the coast, but the open sea is relatively sterile, and fish can just avoid it," said Paulo Cesar Rosman, professor of coastal and oceanographic engineering at Rio's Federal University. "It probably will surface little by little, a slick here and there."
The government environmental protection agency also said the spill was unlikely to have a major environmental impact on the region.
Still, the spill was part of a larger problem, Rosman said.
"Jacques Cousteau taught us that oil spills are like smoking the problem is the cumulative effect over time," he said. "This is one more."
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