Thursday Update: Fire Out at Pemex Processing Platform
Update 3: (5:40 p.m. EDT): Ten vessels are now on scene fighting the fire at the Abkatun A- Permanente platform in the southern Gulf of Mexico.
Photos from the scene posted to social media show the platform has partially collapsed.
Pemex has once again confirmed that four workers were killed and 16 others were injured, including two with serious injuries. The decease include one Pemex employee, one contractor from Cotemar and two that have not yet been identified.
Pemex now says that 302 rig workers were evacuated after the initial explosion and fire.
The Director General of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya, held a meeting Wednesday afternoon at the Regional Emergency Care Center in Paraiso, Tabasco to coordinate the response effort. He later made a flyby past the platform to oversee the continued firefighting efforts.
Some videos of the fire can be found at the bottom of this post.
Update 2 (1:50 p.m. EDT): Pemex has now confirmed four fatalities from today’s explosion and fire at a Pemex platform in the Bay of Campeche.
Update 1: Pemex has reported that 1 fatality has now been confirmed. The worker killed was a contractor from the company Cotemar, an oil services company based in Mexico. Pemex reported that it has received reports of 16 injured, including two with serious injuries.
The company said that fire was in the dewatering and pumping area of the platform.
MEXICO CITY, April 1 (Reuters) – Mexican state-run oil company Pemex said on Wednesday it had evacuated around 300 workers after a fire broke out on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, with local emergency services reporting that at least 45 people were injured.
Pemex said on Twitter that eight firefighting boats were tackling the blaze, which erupted overnight on the Abkatun Permanente platform in the oil-rich Bay of Campeche.
A spokesman for emergency services in the city of Ciudad del Carmen said authorities had registered 45 people injured so far due to the blaze.
The spokesman said no fatalities were reported, though local Mexican media said that at least one person had died.
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.
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. (Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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Below are some videos reportedly showing the fire. The authenticity of the videos cannot be confirmed at this time:
¡Impresionante! #Video del incendio de la plataforma Abkatun Alfa en la Sonda de #Campeche #PEMEX @OlmecaDiario pic.twitter.com/E7RxBzdQzR
— Sistema Informativo (@SistemaInfoVEOO) April 1, 2015
Incendio en la plataforma #AbkatunAlfa #PEMEX pic.twitter.com/5ySJpBkcPn Los envidiosos diran qe es por falta de presupuesto de mantenimiento — Lamanoquemecelacuna (@HOLYKIDOFATOCHA) April 1, 2015
