One oil worker was killed and nine others were missing Thursday after the oil platform they were working on in the Caspian Sea collapsed in heavy winds, Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR said, reports BSS.
The firm said in a statement that “a 150-metre section of a scaffold bridge and an oil platform collapsed into the sea as a result of heavy winds of up to 41 metres per second”.
“The body of one oil worker has been recovered. Nine people are missing,” SOCAR said, adding that the country’s emergencies ministry was conducting a rescue operation.
In December 2015, a storm damaged a gas line on a platform in the deepwater Guneshli section of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore oil field,causing a fire that killed 33 oil workers.
A mainly Muslim country of nine million wedged between Russia and Iran,Azerbaijan is a key partner in projects to deliver Caspian Sea energy reserves to the West through pipelines to Georgia and Turkey, bypassing Russia.
In 1994, the government of Azerbaijan signed an agreement to develop the vast Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field with a consortium of foreign companies,including Britain’s BP, Norway’s Statoil, and American oil and gas giants Chevron and Exxonmobil.
