Gas surge shut BP's oil well down a few weeks before Gulf spill

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a report that a particularly intense burst of natural gas caused the Deepwater Horizon drilling
rig to be shut down
over fears of an explosion "just weeks before a
similar release succeeded in destroying and sinking the platform and sent
millions of gallons of oil on a collision course with Louisiana and the rest
of the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico."