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Navy scours seas for missing oilmen



By Upstream staff 

Mexican navy rescue teams aboard helicopters and boats scoured the seas today for seven missing oil workers who fled an offshore rig that was damaged in a deadly storm.

Weather conditions began to calm in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, which was struck by a cold front earlier in the week that killed 18 workers at the battered oil platform and shut Mexico's three major oil exporting ports yesterday and the day before.

Two of the three ports - Coatzacoalcos and Dos Bocas - reopened this morning, though Cayo Arcos port remained closed .

Mexico's state oil company Pemex said rescue crews continued to search for the missing workers.

"It is not over yet. There are more helicopters because the weather has improved," said Pemex spokesman Javier Delgado.

State-owned Pemex said late last night 61 people had been rescued after huge waves knocked Perforadora Central's 200 foot mat cantilever jack-up rig Usumacinta into the Kab 101 production platform late on Tuesday.

Workers on the jack-rig, in the Kab oilfield, had jumped into emergency rafts after the collision caused leaks in crude oil and natural gas pipes.

Survivors of the accident told harrowing tales of jumping into life rafts despite 130 kilometre per hour winds.

"We knew the sea conditions were adverse, but we left because we had no choice," said oilman Eder Ortega, who also described the scene when one emergency raft started to sink.

"It was breaking up little by little until the raft finally went under and all my colleagues ended up in the water," Reuters quoted Ortega as telling local radio.

The death toll includes at least one crew member from the firefighting vessel Morrison Tide. The vessel was dispatched to the damaged rig after high waves and winds tossed the Usumacinta into a well protector on the Kab oilfield, causing a hydrocarbon leak.

Perforadora Central is the Mexican company under contract with Pemex to drill in the Bay of Campeche.

The Morrison Tide is a fire fighting class 1 vessel built at Batamec Shipyard, Indonesia and originally delivered to New Orleans-based Tidewater in 2005, according to the American Bureau of Shipping. The vessel is operated by Tidewater's Mexican unit.

The offshore fire fighting vessel is registered at Tidewater’s Mexican unit, according to the US marine classification society's website.

Pemex said it would take three to five days to control the leak from the platform.

In all, the death toll includes seven workers from Perforadora Central as well as four workers from the service companyr Sercomsa.

Two other victims have not been identified yet, but the state-run company has indicated it lost workers as well.


Thursday, 25 October, 2007, 16:00 GMT  | last updated: Thursday, 25 October, 2007, 17:15 GMT

This composite picture released by Pemex shows units of a simliar type to those which collided on Tuesday
 

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