Search for Missing Offshore Workers Still Ongoing
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said on Friday that the search for the offshore oil workers missing in the Caspian Sea was still in progress.
Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that maritime surveillance helicopter was still conducting a search for missing workers.
According to AzerNews, daily newspaper in Azerbaijan, the bodies of twelve workers have so far been retrieved, while eighteen remain missing.
To remind, the oil workers went missing after two separate incidents that occurred in December 2015 in the Caspian Sea. The incidents happened on Socar-owned Guneshli 10 platform, and on platform No. 501 of the Oil Rocks field where a part of the platform with the living quarters collapsed into the sea after which three men went missing.
The incident on the Guneshli field started when the storm damaged a gas pipeline, leading to the fire at the platform producing oil from the field. Sixty three persons were aboard the Guneshli 10 at the time of the incident, and thirty three workers were rescued.
At the end of December 2015, Azerbaijan’s government and the country’s oil and gas company Socar said they would give material aid to the families of the oil workers affected by the offshore accidents.
Monument for victims of Guneshli and Oil Rocks
On March 17, 2016, Socar President Rovnag Abdullayev held a meeting with the relatives of oilmen, who died and went missing during the accidents at Guneshli and Oil Rocks fields due to severe storm on December 4, 2015.
Socar President said rescuers are carrying out search for the missing oilmen and taking necessary measures for intensive searches in the territory of Turkmenistan.
According to Socar, the participants of the meeting were informed that memorial monument would be designed to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Guneshli and Oil Rocks accidents.
