Mexico City, July 8 (BNA): Two workers have died and another is missing after a fire broke out early Friday morning at an offshore platform operated by Mexico’s state oil company Pemex off the southern edge of the Gulf of Mexico.
Pemex said in Twitter posts that it had monitored all other workers and said oil production was badly affected by the fire, Reuters reported.
A video clip circulated on social media showed the huge platform and the intertwined pipelines that caught fire, while nearby boats sought to put out the fire with hoses.
The platform operates on the company’s Cantarell field, which was once one of the most productive in the world.
Earlier today, Pemex said six people were injured in the fire, which it said started on the Nohoch-A platform and then spread to a pressure platform.
It was not immediately clear on Friday evening if the victims were among the six injured.
Later on Friday, the company said oil production had been “significantly affected” by the fire. Pemex did not provide further details about the impact on production.
“Our technicians are studying how to repair pipelines, interconnections and other work to restore them,” the company said in a separate post on Twitter.
CEO Octavio Romero alluded to the impact in a video released by the company.
“We will continue to look for this person as our number one priority, and also think about how we can reinvigorate activity in the area because Nohoch is so important,” he said.
A statement from Pemex Friday morning indicated that 321 of the 328 people working on the sprawling platform have been successfully evacuated.
Over the past decade, Cantarell has seen its crude oil production drop dramatically. But it is still responsible for about 170,000 bpd, according to company data.
The vast majority of Mexico’s oil production comes from the nearby shallow water fields clustered around the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf, where Pemex has suffered a number of industrial accidents in recent years.
Rial
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