At the briefing Balamirza Agaragimirov, chief engineer of SOCAR sub-company Azneft, informed that “we’re going to stop temporarily the production on this platform”.
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According to him, the fire on the platform still continues.
“Communication with the emergency platform #10 has been cut off”, Agarahimov said.
Touching upon the search of missing 26 oilmen, Agarahimov said that the underwater search for oil workers has been now suspended due to the strong wind, which reaches 23 meters per second with gusts up to 30 meters per second.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev had declared a day of national mourning on Sunday as the state-owned State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) declared that 29 workers are missing and presumed dead.
Severe storm conditions have hampered rescue efforts and caused one lifeboat carrying workers to break free from its fastenings and fall into the water, the Wall Street Journal said.
Aliragimov also said that experts of the Boots & Coots company are preparing a plan to prevent an oil spill after the fire is extinguished. A total of 63 people were working on there when the blaze broke out, with 33 having been rescued so far and a further 23 still missing.
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The incident occurred when a natural gas pipeline was damaged after getting hit by waves during a heavy storm and part of the platform’s living quarters collapsed. At the time, the booth contained three people – Javad Khudaverdiyev, Bahman Jafarov and Rovshan Mammadov.
