Several workers at an offshore platform run by Mexican state oil company Pemex in the Gulf of Mexico are missing after a fire broke out early Friday morning, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters.
The president said Pemex firefighters were at the scene at the Cantarell complex, in the Bay of Campeche, to put out the fire after an explosion at a gas production platform and that employees were evacuated.
“There are some missing, three or four,” Lopez Obrador said at a regular press conference.
One Pemex employee and three others were injured, the oil workers union said in a statement.
A source at the company told that the fire was at Pemex’s Nohoch-A offshore gas compression platform, but that oil production remained unaffected.
The injuries caused were minor, the source added.
Cantarell produces from one of Mexico’s largest oil fields which for decades was one of Pemex’s crown jewels. Production at Cantarell has now declined to 170,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to Pemex data.