29 Missing Offshore Azerbaijan

Published Dec 6, 2015 6:59 PM by The Maritime Executive

29 workers missing after an oil platform in the Caspian Sea caught fire on Friday are feared dead, and President Ilham Aliyev has declared a day of national mourning.

Azeri state energy company SOCAR said on Sunday that one worker had been killed and 33 rescued, out of the 62 who were on the oil rig when the fire started.

"We continue the search-and-rescue operation ... We regard those whom we have not found so far as missing ... We believe that God will help them, although it's probably impossible," Khoshbakh Usifzade, SOCAR first vice-president, told a news conference.

Usifzade added rescuers were also searching for three more workers who had been swept into the sea in an accident on another oil platform on Friday.

He said the fire was not completely extinguished yet but hoped it would be by the end of the day.

Daily production on the platform was 920 tons of oil and 1.08 million cubic meters of gas. "These figures are our production losses so far," he said.

Usifzade said the company would review its safety measures on its platforms, many of which were built in Soviet times.

The fire may have been caused by a damaged gas riser, and initial reports suggest that weather was a factor.

The severe winds and seas experienced in the area caused three separate offshore platform accidents on Friday. In the third incident, Oil and Gas People reports that a flotel connected to the BP Chirag platform, which is currently undergoing a shutdown, has moved away from the platform and is reported to have lost at least three of its anchors. The flotel, the Gurban Abasov, is a converted crane barge; it is believed that those on board were evacuated prior to the storm hitting the area.

Four workers were killed and one went missing after a fire broke out one of SOCAR's platforms in the Caspian Sea in October 2014; overall, fourteen died on the company’s offshore rigs that year.