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Teams of workers are mobilizing in the Gulf of Mexico to try to stem a natural gas leak at an offshore drilling rig that exploded and caught fire Tuesday. The rig off the Louisiana coast has been partially destroyed by the out of control blaze, and firefighting boats are on the scene.

While that might call to mind images of the BP oil disaster in 2010, experts say the incidents are vastly different.

Chris Reddy, an oil spill expert and chemist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, was among the scientists who followed the fate of the BP spill, when the Deep Water Horizon oil rig blew up and leaked millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Reddy says that while deep-sea gas reservoirs may sometimes contain oil, it's highly unlikely the accident at Well A-3 adjacent to a "Hercules 265 jack-up rig" would leak anything like the BP spill.

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