Azerbaijan mourns 'many deaths' after oil rig fire

Azerbaijan was on Dec. 6 searching for 29 missing oil workers after a storm caused their offshore oil rig to catch fire, as the president ordered a day of mourning.

A fire broke out on the rig in the Caspian following a storm on Dec. 4 "leading to many deaths," said a statement on the official website of President Ilham Aliyev.    

"I join the relatives in their grief and designate December 6 as a day of mourning in Azerbaijan," it quoted him as saying.
 
The statement was the closest to an official confirmation that 30 workers may have perished at sea when one lifeboat where the crew was taking refuge fell into the water.
 
Rescue workers had lifted a total of 33 people from the rig, the open water, and from a lifeboat that was suspended 10 metres (35 feet) above the stormy waters.     But the second lifeboat fell into the water and has not been recovered.
 
So far, one worker's body has been recovered.
 
On its Facebook page, SOCAR listed the 62 names of those working on the rig, who were either rescued or missing.
 
"We are looking for 29 people. Whether they are alive or dead we don't know. Before we find them we cannot pronounce them dead," SOCAR vice-president Khoshbakht Yusifzade told journalists at a press conference on Dec. 6.
         
The storm had on Friday damaged a gas line on platform number 10 in the deepwater Guneshli section of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore oil field, causing a fire, SOCAR said.
 
Prosecutors on Dec. 5 opened an inquiry into possible "breaches of fire safety regulations".
   
The Guneshli deposits were discovered in 1981 in the south Caspian Sea, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) east of the Azeri capital Baku.
 
The deepwater...