MIRI: Sixteen offshore workers were evacuated in an emergency operation when fire broke out on a part of an oil drilling platform belonging to Petronas in deep waters in the South China Sea. Five of the 16 suffered varying degrees of burns in the incident, one of them seriously.

The fire razed the part of the platform that housed the compressor skid.

There were 16 people on board doing maintenance work on the platform during the fire at 9.20am yesterday.

All of the 16 were successfully evacuated and the fire was doused in an hour.

In pain: A worker being rushed to the Miri General Hospital after he suffered serious burns during a fire at an oil drilling platform near Miri Monday.

The incident happened at the Tukau B drilling platform, a 41 metric tonnes structure built 60m-deep underwater inside the vicinity of the Tukau Oilfield, located 31km from the Miri shoreline.

The workers injured in the incident were rushed to the Miri General Hospital

Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd confirmed the incident.

“The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Datuk Sebastian Ting, political secretary to Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Peter Chin visited the injured in hospital.

“Two are staff of Petronas while three others are workers belonging to the contractor. One of them has been warded in the Red Zone of the burns unit, two in the Yellow Zone and the two others in the Green Zone. The one in the Red Zone is a technician and he sustained second-degree burns. All of them are Malaysians,” said Ting, who is also the SUPP Piasau branch chairman.

The Department of Environment (DOE) contacted Petronas to find out what had happened and was informed that the fire incident did not cause any environmental pollution or oil contamination of any sort in the South China Sea.

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