Seven workers died on Wednesday, June 11 at the construction site of a PEMEX offshore drilling platform in Veracruz, Mexico, Empresas ICA, a Mexico-based holding company confirmed on Friday.
The ill-fated workers were dismantling a scaffolding from the Ayatsil – C Platform, which is under construction for Mexico’s Pemex, when their “man basket”, supported by a Manitowoc 600 ton crane, fell from a height of 40 meters. An eighth person sustained severe injuries when the basket struck down the workers below.
The probe into the accident’s cause is underway.
Pemex awarded the platform construction contract, worth $95 million, to ICA Fluor, a joint venture between ICA and Texas-based Fluor Corporation, in 2012.
The platform is intended to mobilize for the Ku-Maloob-Zaap field in the Gulf of Mexico.
The accident comes only three months after a Pemex worker, hurt in a platform fire at the Cantarell oilfield, died having sustained fatal injuries.
[mappress] World Maritime News Staff, June 16, 2014; Image: Pemex