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Sunken oil rig spilling oil

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- The world's largest offshore oil platform sank in just a few minutes Tuesday, five days after powerful blasts rocked the rig and killed 10 people.

Petrobras has confirmed the platform has started to spill oil in waters north of Rio de Janeiro state.

The state's Environmental Secretary, Andre Correa, said Petrobras is in a race against the clock to minimize the spilling.

Correa estimates the slick that could form could be as wide as 600 meters in diameter.

The 40-storey-tall rig, 75 miles (120 kilometers) off the Brazilian coast, was ravaged last Thursday by explosions and fire that killed at least two workers. Eight others are still missing and presumed dead.

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Petrobras flew in experts and equipment from around the world to try to keep the rig afloat.

The explosion knocked out a supporting pillar, and the platform tilted and sank into the sea off the coast of Macae, 120 miles (195 kilometers) northeast of Rio.

Over the weekend, a team of navy divers, engineers and foreign consultants injected nitrogen into flooded compartments, partly righting it, Petrobras said.

But high winds and rough seas hindered efforts Monday. Petrobras said the platform "shifted suddenly" early Tuesday morning.

There is up to 395,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of crude and diesel in underwater pipelines and onboard tanks that could spill into the ocean.

But the amount of oil is just a fraction of 11 million gallons (41.6 million liters) spilled by the Exxon Valdez supertanker into the Alaskan seas in 1989.

Chief Executive Henri Philippe Reichstul said the oil and gas wells were sealed before the rig was evacuated. An official statement from Petrobras has played down the risk.

Reichstul said Petrobras would do everything it could to avoid an ecological disaster and minimize the affects of the spill.

Petrobras has 13 ships stationed around the stricken rig with floating oil barriers to prevent a disaster.

"The concern is to get the absorption barriers around the oil ... and in these conditions we expect the environmental impact to be minimal," said Carlos Henrique Mendes of the environmental authority Ibama.

Non-governmental environmentalists were also not overly alarmed.

Garo Batmanian, secretary general of World Wildlife Fund for Nature in Brazil said: "It is not a biodiverse area, it is almost off the continental shelf. The current is also not bringing it to the coast."

Brazil had aimed to be self sufficient in auto fuel production by 2005, and the sunken platform was crucial to the project. The company estimates the sinking will cost it $100 million per month.

Engineers have said it would be virtually impossible to salvage the rig because the waters are so deep -- 1400 metres.

The body of only one of the 10 people presumed killed in the explosions has been recovered and brought back to the town of Macae, the rig's land base 118 miles up the coast from Rio de Janeiro.

Petrobras has listed the nine others as dead.



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