29 workers still missing from Azeri oil rig fire
Print Edition
Azerbaijan was searching for 29 missing oil workers yesterday after a storm caused their offshore oil rig to catch fire.
The president has ordered a day of mourning.
A fire broke out on the rig in the Caspian following a storm on Friday “leading to many deaths,” said a statement on the official website of President Ilham Aliyev.
“I join the relatives in their grief and designate December 6 as a day of mourning in Azerbaijan,” it quoted him as saying. Flags were ordered to fly at half mast and entertainment programs were cancelled, his office said.
Aliyev’s statement was the closest to an official confirmation that 30 workers have likely perished at sea when one lifeboat where the crew was taking refuge fell into the water.
Rescue workers had lifted a total of 33 people from the rig, the open water, and from a lifeboat that was suspended 10 meters above the stormy waters. But a second lifeboat fell into the water and has not been recovered. The workers were wearing life vests, according to the company, and some of them were recovered from the sea at a considerable distance from the rig.
So far, the body of one worker has been found.
SOCAR state energy firm listed the 62 names of its employees working on the rig, who were either rescued or missing.
“We are looking for 29 people. Whether they are alive or dead we don’t know. Before we find them we cannot pronounce them dead,” company Vice-President Khoshbakht Yusifzade told a press briefing yesterday.
Eleven helicopters were still searching for the lifeboat but it may have already drifted out of Azerbaijan’s waters.
It was last seen from the air 50 kilometers from the rig, SOCAR said, adding that Azerbaijan’s government has asked other Caspian nations Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan to aid in recovering the bodies if necessary.
The storm had damaged a gas line on platform No. 10 in the deepwater Guneshli section of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore oil field, causing a fire, SOCAR said.
The fire was still burning yesterday, but SOCAR said it would be extinguished by the evening.
Prosecutors on Saturday opened a probe into possible “breaches of fire safety regulations.”
The Guneshli deposits were discovered in 1981 in the south Caspian Sea, some 90 kilometers east of the Azeri capital Baku. Platform number 10 is operated solely by SOCAR.
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