Seven Petroleos Mexicanos workers are unaccounted for after a natural gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded early Friday morning, while six people were reported injured, the company said.
(Bloomberg) — Seven Petroleos Mexicanos workers are unaccounted for after a natural gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded early Friday morning, while six people were reported injured, the company said.
A fire broke at 5:25 a.m. local time Friday at the Nohoch Alfa platform processing center in the Cantarell oil and gas field, Pemex said in a statement. The state-owned company said 321 workers had been evacuated and four vessels were sent to control the fire. Pemex firefighters and the navy are working to put out the blaze, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in his morning press conference on Friday.
Pemex has come under scrutiny from analysts for its environmental and safety record after frequent accidents and explosions at its facilities. The company is shouldering $107.4 billion in debt, the most of any oil major, and is struggling under a liquidity crunch.
“Under the austerity plans of this government, rigorous safety has been bypassed, and they are moving into areas that are much more complex” for oil and gas production, said John Padilla, a managing director at energy consultant IPD Latin America. The blast comes as Pemex has “their revolver fully drawn and banks don’t want to extend credit because of a lack of a credible ESG plan, and this puts their funding plans further in jeopardy.”
Fires hit half of its refineries in the second half of May, while the company also reported a spate of accidents in single day at three separate facilities in February, including at its Deer Park plant in Texas. In 2021, a huge gas explosion near its offshore oil platform — an incident dubbed the “eye of fire” — sparked criticism from famed environmental activist Greta Thunberg and US Senator Bernie Sanders. Another offshore platform accident that year resulted in five deaths and Pemex was forced to cut output by a quarter.
Natural gas from the Nohoch Alfa platform is sent to the CPG Ciudad Pemex power station in the state of Tabasco. The platform also receives nitrogen to inject into the Cantarell field cluster, which had crude production of 171,326 barrels a day in May, according to Energy Ministry data.
(Updates paragraphs three and four with Pemex debt, IPD Latin America’s Padilla comment.)
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