Bid to cap oil well

Press, 6 October 1980, Page 4

Bid to cap oil well

NZPA-Reuter Bahraii A team of disaster- specialists have begun their first attempt to cap an out-of-control oil rig in the Gulf, where 19 men died in a cloud of poison gas on Thursday.

The American-owned rig Ron Tapmeyer has belched explosive hydrogen sulphide since the blow-out. A spokesman for the Arabian oil company (A.R.A.M.C.0.) said that the team, from the disaster company run by Mr Red Adair, was trying to board the rig and cap the well.

The gas cloud suffocated 19 men. and put 19 others in hospital. The 38 other crewmen scrambled to Safety on liferafts and by helicopter.

The rig, ru« for A.R.A.M.C.O. by The Reading Bates Offshore Drilling Company, struck a dense pocket of gas 100 miles north of the Saudi Arabian oil terminal of Ras Tanura.

The dead have not been identified, but a survivor said that they included Filipinos, Pakistanis, and Europeans. The United States Consultate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, said that two Americans were among those killed. The survivor said that he watched the workmen collapse on the deck as gas and oil spurted from the well head. Some of the crew tried to put on oxygen masks but were too late, he said. Some survivors were plucked from liferafts in the sea.