Mexico City, February 23. The state-owned company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said Thursday evening that the fire at its facilities in a cavity in Veracruz, southern Mexico, was under control, although the cause of its origin has not yet been determined and that five workers are missing.
“Pemex has extinguished a fire that started in the PM-119 drilling rig which maintained the Tuzandepetl-331 cavity,” Mexico’s national oil company said.
According to information from Pemex, the fire broke out in the drilling equipment “for reasons not yet determined”, for which the emergency care and management group was activated to control and extinguish the fire. , which revealed a column of smoke kilometers away, in different municipalities of the state in eastern Mexico.
Regarding this incident, Pemex reported the disappearance of five workers, in the midst of “exhaustive activities” to find them.
Additionally, he said three other injured workers have also been registered and are being treated at a Pemex hospital.
The facilities where the fire broke out are part of the Cavity Rehabilitation Project of the Tuzandepetl Strategic Storage Plant, located in the municipality of Ixhuatlán del Sureste, Veracruz.
Prior to this event, a first fire had also been reported inside the Lázaro Cárdenas de Minatitlán refinery, one of the largest in Latin America, where five other workers were also injured, with burns to the first and second degree.
The State Secretariat for Civil Protection reported that the incident occurred at 12:30 p.m., without the causes of the incident being known.
The agency explained that this fire was dealt with internally by teams of firefighters (firefighters) at the Pemex refinery.
A short time later, the fire was extinguished in its entirety, without the intervention of outside emergency services; however, this caused anxiety among the residents of the municipality of Minatitlán. EFE
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