Pemex Oil Platform Fire Kills One And Seriously Injures Two

(CTN News) – The Mexican national oil company Pemex said on Sunday that at least one contractor had been killed after a fire broke out on an offshore platform it operates on. The company added that two other workers were in a “grave” condition after the fire.

In the southern Gulf of Mexico, where most of Pemex’s oil production is produced, nine workers of Pemex suffered injuries as as result of a fire that broke out on Saturday afternoon at its Akal-B platform, located in the southern Gulf of Mexico.

Moreover, five of the nine offenders were employees of Pemex and the other three were contractors for Diavaz and COTER, both of which are companies from the local area.

In a statement issued a day earlier, Pemex said just two of its employees had been injured, and that none of the injuries were serious, as the fire had been controlled in 16 minutes, and no serious injuries had been sustained.

In recent years, Pemex infrastructure across Mexico has suffered numerous fatal accidents, which analysts often attribute to poor maintenance and other operational deficiencies on the part of Pemex.

As one of the shallow water wells in complex of shallow water wells located within the Cantarell formation, the Akal-B platform is one of the older, but still significant shallow water wells in the complex.

At present, there are about 200,000 barrels of crude oil produced per day from the complex, but it used to be one of the world’s top producing fields two decades ago with a daily production of over 2 million barrels.

Pemex did not provide details as to how oil and gas production from the complex had been affected as a result of the accident.

There was an acknowledgement in the letter that the company was still investigating both the cause of the incident and the actions that would be necessary in order to “reestablish” operations at its processing center in the wake of the incident.

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