MEXICO CITY – A gas leak from underwater pipelines caused a vast fire on the ocean surface, west of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The fire was smothered on Friday, state-owned oil company Pemex claims, not before the videos with the images went viral. On social media there was talk of “eye of fire” for the circular shape of the bright orange flames that flared up on the water, suggesting lava, a short distance from the oil platform Pemex.
According to the company, it took workers more than five hours to completely put out the fire, using nitrogen. The fire started in an undersea pipeline connected to a platform at Pemex’s largest oil facility, Ku Maloob Zaap, just above the southern edge of the Gulf of Mexico, from which the company extracts more than 40% of its nearly 1 , 7 million barrels of daily production ..
Pemex has a long history of serious industrial accidents in its facilities. According to the company, no injuries were reported and the production was not affected. The gas leak began around 5:15 am local time. It was completely shut down by 10:30.
Angel Carrizales, director of the Mexican oil safety agency, wrote about Twitter that the accident “caused no spill,” but without explaining what was burning on the surface of the water.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a deputy from the US Democratic Left, tweeted: “Shout it out to all the MPs who go out to dinner with the Exxon lobbyists, so they can say that a green New Deal is too expensive.”
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