Safety is Always !!!
It was a very sad oilfield incident and these are NEWS from two sources, AP and reuter.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A fire erupted Wednesday at an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, killing four workers, injuring 16 and forcing the evacuation of 300, Mexico’s state-owned oil company said.
A survivor of the blaze on the Abkatun Permanente platform in the Campeche Sound said workers “jumped into the sea out of desperation and panic.”
“There was nothing you could do but run,” said Roger Arias Sanchez, an employee of Petroleos Mexicanos’ contractor Cotemar who escaped the burning platform in an evacuation boat. He spoke in Ciudad del Carmen in Campeche state, where most of the injured and evacuated workers were taken.
Eight firefighting boats were trying to extinguish the fire, said Pemex. Mexico’s Energy Security Agency said the fire “is being extinguished.”
On its Twitter account Wednesday afternoon, Pemex raised the death toll from one to four. In an earlier statement, it said that two of the 16 injured workers were in serious condition. Many appeared to be Cotemar employees.
Pemex’s media office said it was unclear whether any significant amount of oil had spilled from the shallow-water Abkatun Permanente platform, which largely serves to separate gas, oil and other petroleum products, and pump them to refineries onshore.
The platform lies off the coast of the states of Campeche and Tabasco. It is further out to sea than the platform involved in the last severe fire in the area, the 2007 fire at the Kab 121 offshore rig.
That accident was caused by high waves that hit the rig, sending a boom crashing into an oil platform’s valve assembly. The accident killed at least 21 workers and the rig spilled crude and natural gas for almost two months.
Mexico’s worst major spill in the Gulf was in June 1979, when an offshore drilling rig in Mexican waters — the Ixtoc I — blew up, releasing 140 million gallons of oil.
It took Pemex and a series of U.S. contractors nearly nine months to cap the well, and a great deal of the oil contaminated Mexican and U.S. waters.
Update ( Reuters ) : 4 Died , 302 Evacuated , 45 injured
Fire Engulfs Pemex Oil Platform 300 Evacuated
Mexican state-run oil company Pemex said at least one person died and 16 were injured after a fire broke out on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, sparking the evacuation of around 300 workers.
Local emergency services reported that as many as 45 people were injured at the blaze that erupted overnight on the Abkatun Permanente platform in the oil-rich Bay of Campeche.
Pemex said it was battling the flames with eight firefighting boats, and that a contractor for Mexican oil services company Cotemar had died in the blaze. One of the injured was in serious condition, the company added.
Earlier, a spokesman for emergency services in the nearby city of Ciudad del Carmen said authorities had registered 45 people with injuries due to the fire.
The platform forms part of the Abkatun-Pol-Chuc offshore complex. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, production at the complex has fallen steadily since the 1990s to below 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2013.
Mexico currently produces just under 2.3 million bpd.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the fire in the Gulf, which is home to Mexico’s biggest oil field.
Cotemar is based in Ciudad del Carmen and provides offshore services to Pemex including platform refurbishment, maintenance, and maritime transport, according to its website.
Pemex has suffered a number of accidents in recent years, with at least 37 people killed by a blast at the company’s Mexico City headquarters in 2013. Another 26 people were killed at a fire in a Pemex natural gas facility in September 2012.
Hi,
Thank you so much for the news,but please do not hesitate to feed us back when you get any details about the cause(s) of these incident.
Tank you.