Mexican oil rig burns off coast, 4 dead, 16 injured

Source: San Antonio Express-News/NYT

Huge fireballs illuminated the dawn skies of the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday as an explosion and fire killed four people and injured as many as 16 others on a large oil platform in the southeastern Bay of Campeche, Mexican officials said.

At least eight fire boats battled the sheets of flame soaring high above the wreckage of the shallow-water Abkatun-Permanente platform in Campeche Sound. The platform’s chief function is to separate gas and oil before it is pumped to onshore refineries.

In a statement, Mexico’s state-run oil company, Pemex, which owns the rig, said that there was no evidence of a major spill but that the blast had forced the evacuation of more than 300 workers from the rig in seas off the southern state of Tabasco.
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The explosion also raised questions, once again, about the company’s safety record. Only two years ago, a blast at Pemex’s Mexico City headquarters killed 37 people. In 2007, a fire at the Kab 121 rig in Campeche Sound killed 21 workers.



Read more: http://www.expressnews.com/news/us-world/article/Mexican-oil-rig-burns-off-coast-4-dead-16-6173945.php