Mexico’s state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said a fire Saturday at the Akal-B offshore platform in Campeche Bay left one worker dead and nine injured, including two in critical condition.
The deceased worker was an employee of a contractor company called COTER.
The incident occurred in an area where pipelines supply natural gas as a fuel for the platform’s turbomachinery, Pemex said.
One of the workers in critical condition is a Pemex employee, while the other works for COTER.
Pemex said it was investigating the cause of the blaze and taking actions that would allow the restart of operations.
The fire is the latest in a long series of fatal accidents at Pemex oil and gas installations.
Like the previous one in July 2023, Saturday’s tragedy occurred at a platform that serves the shallow water Cantarell complex, one of Mexico’s main oil and gas plays. The Akal field within Cantarell was Mexico’s No. 2 natural gas producing field in February, with output averaging 451 MMcf/d.
The latest accident comes just a month after Pemex’s board approved the company’s 2023-2027 sustainability plan. Operational safety is one of the plan’s five strategic pillars, with a goal to achieve zero fatalities by 2030. Other goals include reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, along with zero routine flaring in the upstream segment and a 30% reduction in methane emissions by 2030.
For 2022, Pemex reported a lost time injury rate (LTIR) of 0.49 per million man-hours with exposure to risk. This rate was up 40% from the prior year and 123% higher than the company’s goal.
By comparison, the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) reported an overall LTIR for operators and contractors of 0.28 in 2022. The 51 companies reporting accident data for the year included Brazilian national oil company Petróleos Brasileiro (Petrobras) and Argentina’s 51% state-owned YPF SA, but not Pemex.
For 2024, Pemex is targeting an LTIR of 0.21. The company has not yet published the figure for accidents recorded in 2023.
The heavily indebted firm received a two-notch downgrade to its credit rating by Moody’s in February. The agency cited cash flow and liquidity problems, noting that Pemex has $10.9 billion of debt payments due this year, with another $13.7 billion in notes set to mature in 2026.
Pemex produced 3.84 Bcf/d or 95% of the country’s gas output in February, government data show. However, Pemex consumes about 1.59 Bcf/d of gas for its own processes, according to Wood Mackenzie data.
Pemex did not indicate how much production had been knocked offline as a result of Saturday’s accident.
