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Dozens Rescued From Offshore Chinese Rig After Storm (Update3)
2010-09-08 08:37:05.905 GMT
(Closes shares.)
By Bloomberg News
Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Thirty-two workers trapped on an
offshore rig that is listing after a typhoon swept through
China's third-biggest oilfield have been rescued. Two crew
members were plucked from the sea and a further two are missing.
No oil leaked after valves at the No. 3 rig operated by
China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. were turned off, China
Petrochemical Corp., parent of the company known as Sinopec,
said in a statement on its website today. The platform at
Shengli field off Shandong province was hit by Typhoon Malou at
6.52 p.m. local time yesterday, according to the statement.
A blast at BP Plc's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in
April killed 11 workers, spilled more than 4 million barrels of
oil into the sea and sparked a debate on whether tighter
industry regulations are needed. The platform at Shengli field,
Sinopec's biggest, is tilting at an angle of 45 degrees, the
Ministry of Transport said in a statement on its website.
"It doesn't appear this incident will have a great impact
on Sinopec, but it shows there's much greater awareness about
issues of safety and environmental protection since the BP oil
slick," said Wang Aochao, a Shanghai-based analyst at UOB-Kay
Hian Ltd. "The BP accident received a lot of publicity in China,
and the government and companies want to ensure that similar
disasters don't happen here."
The rig is in shallow waters 7 meters (23 feet) deep and 5
nautical miles off the Shandong coast, the transport ministry
said. Waves as tall as 4 meters had slammed into the platform,
which is now "generally stable," Sinopec's parent said,
without giving production details.
Rescue vessels from the eastern province were unable to
berth at the rig last night because of high winds, according to
the ministry. The workers were rescued this morning, said
Sinopec Group, as China Petrochemical is known.
Oilfield Safety
Sinopec fell 0.5 percent to HK$6.31 in Hong Kong trading
today, compared with the 1.5 percent drop in the benchmark Hang
Seng Index. Cnooc Ltd., China's biggest offshore energy explorer,
declined 0.4 percent.
Cnooc took more than 12 months to restore output at its
22,000 barrel-a-day rig at Liuhua field after it was damaged by
Typhoon Chanchu in 2006. The closure cut about 5 percent of
Cnooc's overall production during that period.
China, the world's second-biggest oil user, faces a
"tough" situation in offshore oilfield safety, Wang Dexue,
deputy director at the State Administration of Work Safety, said
on June 10. "Risks" in oil and gas exploration in Chinese
waters are rising as facilities age, Wang said.
China National Offshore Oil Corp., Cnooc's parent, may
delay the startup of its first deepwater rig to be deployed in
the South China Sea because of safety reviews, Chen Bi, the
unit's executive vice president, said on June 8.
Exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has slowed since the BP
accident, Baker Hughes Inc. said on June 4. Cnooc plans to start
operating nine new projects off the Chinese coast this year to
help drive production growth.
For Related News and Information:
Top Energy Stories: ETOP <GO>
--Chua Baizhen in Beijing, Winnie Zhu in Shanghai and John Duce
in Hong Kong. With assistance from Huang Zhe in Beijing. Editors:
Ryan Woo, John Viljoen.
To contact the Bloomberg staff on this story:
Baizhen Chua in Beijing at +86-10-6649-7561 or
bchua14@bloomberg.net;
Winnie Zhu in Shanghai at +86-21-6104-7013 or
wzhu4@bloomberg.net;
John Duce in Hong Kong at +852-2977-2237 or
Jduce1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Clyde Russell at +65-6311-2423 or
crussell7@bloomberg.net;
John Viljoen at +61-2-9777-8657 or
jviljoen@bloomberg.net.
