Pemex Platform Explosion Leaves Two Dead, Impacts Output

(Bloomberg) -- Two people died and one remains missing after a Petroleos Mexicanos natural gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded early Friday, the company said.

Pemex CEO Octavio Romero said in a video that the two people who died and the one missing worked for a different company he didn’t name. He added in a separate video that eight workers were injured, three from Pemex and five from the other company, but their lives are no longer in danger. 

A fire broke out at 5:25 a.m. local time Friday at the Nohoch Alfa platform processing center in the Cantarell oil and gas field, Pemex said earlier. The state-owned company said 321 workers were evacuated.

Romero added Friday evening that the platform’s connection module was destroyed, but that firefighting efforts helped stop the fire from spreading to other modules. 

“There are five processing centers,” Romero said, confirming the fire was totally extinguished. “One of them was the one that caught fire, unfortunately we lost it, and the other four maintained their integrity.” 

Romero also said the explosion will impact “many thousands of barrels” of Pemex output, without giving a precise figure. “We need to quickly return to production, we already have a strategy.”

In a separate video, Angel Cid, head of Pemex’s exploration and production division, said the explosion “substantially impacted” production at the platform, which distributes 600 million cubic feet of gas. 

Pemex has come under scrutiny from analysts for its environmental and safety record after frequent accidents and explosions at its facilities. The company is shouldering $107.4 billion in debt, the most of any oil major, and is struggling under a liquidity crunch.

“Under the austerity plans of this government, rigorous safety has been bypassed, and they are moving into areas that are much more complex” for oil and gas production, said John Padilla, a managing director at energy consultant IPD Latin America. The blast comes as Pemex has “their revolver fully drawn and banks don’t want to extend credit because of a lack of a credible ESG plan, and this puts their funding plans further in jeopardy.”

Fires hit half of its refineries in the second half of May, while the company also reported a spate of accidents in a single day at three separate facilities in February, including at its Deer Park plant in Texas. In 2021, a huge gas explosion near its offshore oil platform — an incident dubbed the “eye of fire” — sparked criticism from famed environmental activist Greta Thunberg and US Senator Bernie Sanders. Another offshore platform accident that year resulted in five deaths and Pemex was forced to cut output by a quarter.

Natural gas from the Nohoch Alfa platform is sent to the CPG Ciudad Pemex power station in the state of Tabasco. The platform also receives nitrogen to inject into the Cantarell field cluster, which had crude production of 171,326 barrels a day in May, according to Energy Ministry data.

(Updates with comments from Pemex CEO throughout)

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.