Rescue operation underway on burning Azeri oil rig

The platform partially collapsed when the storm damaged a natural gas pipeline. Two fire fighting vessels, a dive support vessel and a tug aided rescue operations, after initial attempts were hampered by high wave height, with more than 32 people rescued. A search-and-rescue operation was underway, it added. “The fire on the platform was finally extinguished”, said Mirvari Gakhramanly, head of Azerbaijan’s Oil Workers’ Rights Protection Committee.

The platform, which was built in 1984, produced 900 metric tons of oil a day, the equivalent of 6,700 barrels, said Xosbaxt Yusifzada, the company’s first vice-president.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev ordered a probe into the fire incident.

The bodies were found by the helicopters of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Emergency Situations about 70 kilometers away from the oil rig Monday afternoon, said the TREND news agency’s reports.

In a tacit acknowledgement the missing workers were unlikely to be found alive, the Azeri government has asked the four other Caspian nations – Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan – to help with the search.

Rescue workers had lifted a total of 33 people from the rig, the open water, and from a lifeboat that was suspended 10 metres (35 feet) above the stormy waters. The rig is located in the Guneshli oil field in the western Caspian, or some 120 km east of Baku.

A meeting of the state commission took place today, created in connection with the fire at the platform at the Guneshli field, which belongs to SOCAR.

They were trying to evacuate the burning oil platform and were in a lifeboat that toppled into the Caspian Sea during a storm on Friday. All in all, 14 workers were killed in accidents on SOCAR’s oil and gas platforms in 2014.

Crude from the Azeri sector of the Caspian is exported to worldwide oil markets via a pipeline to the Black Sea and a second line to Turkey’s Mediterranean oil port of Ceyhan.