MOSCOW (MRC) -- A deadly weekend fire at on offshore platform in the southern Gulf of Mexico operated by Mexican state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) could have been caused by a gas leak, reported Reuters with reference to Pemex's chief executive.
Five workers were killed, two are missing and six were injured in the fire on Sunday on the offshore platform that is part of Ku-Maloob-Zaap in the southern Gulf of Mexico, Pemex's most productive oil field.
"This is preliminary because they are doing the analysis to know in detail what happened, but it is presumed that there was a gas leak at the time that maintenance work was being carried out on this platform," Pemex CEO Octavio Romero said in an interview with local journalist Carmen Aristegui.
Scorched remains found in a control room may belong to two people who were missing after the fire, Romero said. DNA samples from relatives were being used to help identify the remains.
The accident knocked 125 wells offline, totaling 421,000 barrels per day (bpd) of lost output, or about 25% of Mexico's total production.
Romero said on Tuesday that Pemex expects to fully resume by Aug. 30 all oil production shut down by the fire.
As MRC informed before, Pemex Petroquimica, a subsidiary of the Mexican state oil company Pemex, has resumed production of high-density polyethylene (LDPE) on line 2 in Cangrejera, Mexico after an unscheduled renovation. Earlier it was noted that Pemex postponed the restart of the second line with a capacity of 200,000 tonnes per year for the production of LDPE until August 10. It was originally planned that the launch of this production will begin at the end of July. The line was closed on 10 July.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is a Mexican state-owned oil and gas and petrochemical company. Since the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry in 1938, Pemex has remained a state-owned company and, by law, has exclusive rights to explore and produce oil in the country. Almost 60% of the company's revenues go to the state budget. Petrochemical products include, but are not limited to, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride.
MRC