MEXICO CITY (AP) – Five workers were killed by the fire at a Petróleos Mexicanos platform in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday. In addition, two people are still missing and one of the six injured is seriously ill, said Octavio Romero, director of Pemex, at a press conference.
The official said that due to the event, production had to be stopped in 125 wells, which means that 421,000 barrels a day will stop producing, although it is expected to gradually resume in a matter of days. Mexico produces 1.7 million barrels a day.
The fire was registered in the electricity generation and compression facilities of the E-Ku-A2 platform of the Ku-Maloob-Zaap complex, located in the state of Campeche, and was controlled just over an hour after it was triggered by causes which are still unknown.
Romero did not want to speculate on the causes of the fire and stressed that an investigation has already been opened in this regard, but he did say that it was an accident.
“The corresponding analyzes are being carried out, the investigations to find out what happened, we cannot point to anything,” he said. “But it was derived, not from an equipment failure, not from a lack of maintenance but from a scheduled task where there was what we all know as an accident. What was it due to? We will know as the days go by ”.
One of the deceased was a Pemex employee along with three of the injured and another person who suffered a nervous breakdown. The rest of the victims and the disappeared are from two companies that offer services to the oil company.
The administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has launched a relentless cost reduction campaign and according to critics this, added to Pemex’s large debt, could affect investment, security and maintenance.
Romero vehemently denied it and stressed that this government is the one that has provided amounts for precisely this type of event and reparations.
The event took place less than two months after another fire in the same Ku-Maloob-Zaap complex, this time in an underwater gas pipeline.
The fire that occurred in early July was attributed to electrical storms and the presence of gas on the surface of the sea.
Pemex ruled out on that occasion that the incident had generated a fuel spill in the sea but the spectacular images that were released on social networks – three ships trying to douse the flames in the middle of the ocean – caused organizations such as Greenpeace or the climate activist Swede Greta Thunberg expressed their concern about what happened and about the risks that oil installations represent for the environment.
Post a Comment