The house-car with oilmen in it has fallen from the emergency platform No 441 of the Nariman Narimanov Oil & Gas Production Department (SOCAR’s Azneft division) and the damaged pipeline with 700 mm diameter has caused ignition, reported State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).
Caspian Barrel reported quoting press office of SOCAR that there were 41 SOCAR’s employees on the platform during the accident. The employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations have evacuated 37 people from the accident site.
Turan news agency reported that all 12 oilmen that were in the open sea have been saved.
A source from the Ministry of Emergency Situations told Turan that information about the fire was received today at 12.00 p.m. and the fire boat Vikhr and helicopters with rescuers have been sent to the accident site. The oilmen that have fallen into the sea have been saved and fire was extinguished at 12.45 p.m.
The emergency well is located 2 km away from Sangachal district, 40 km south of Baku.
SOCAR also reported that at present search for 4 oilmen, who have supposedly fallen into the sea, continues.
10 oilmen have been already delivered to the city hospital.
By the evening SOCAR and the Ministry of Emergency Situations released a joint statement that the bodies of three out of four employees missed during the accident have been found. According to the same source, the Ministry of Emergency Situations’ divers have found the bodies two kilometers away from the accident site on the sea bottom and took them out to the coast.
* On August 19, 2013 there was an accident on the Bulla Deniz platform, which belongs to SOCAR. That time it took three months to extinguish fire in the open sea using efforts of the Ministry of Emergency Situation and the military vessels of Azerbaijani frontier troops. The commission has been created to investigate the reasons of the accident. However, results of the activities of the commission have not been provided to the public: SOCAR did not publish the names of people to blame for the accident and the financial losses suffered by the company. In the report “SOCAR’s Stable Development for 2013” the section “Labor Safety” reads that the company had one accident on Bulla Deniz field, but it managed to avoid human losses. The report reads that in some cases deviation from norms of “Labor Safety” is admissible (sometimes even with lethal outcome) , however, all these facts have occurred in the contractor companies, but not SOCAR itself.
