LEAD: 16 dead, dozens missing in Russian offshore oil rig accident

Dec 19, 2011, 12:16 GMT

Moscow - Russian air and sea rescue teams were searching on Monday for dozens of men missing after a Pacific coast oil rig sank, killing at least 16 people, officials at the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

Ships, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft were battling foul weather and freezing temperatures in the Sea of Okhotsk, some 7,000 kilometres east of the Russian capital Moscow.

A total 67 people were reportedly aboard the platform when the rig sank in a storm on Saturday. It had been under tow by an icebreaker some 200 kilometres to the East of Russia's Sakhalin Island.

Fourteen workers had reached safety by Monday morning. 'Most' were sailors responsible for helping move the rig and had been wearing survival suits and lifesaving kit when picked up out of the water, the Interfax news agency reported.

A storm warning was in effect with waves exceeding five metres. Search crews had managed to recover eleven of the sixteen corpses found in the water so far, the report said.

The rig went underwater in less than 20 minutes, possibly because accumulated ice prevented water-tight hatches from closing, according to news reports.

More than half of the men aboard the rig were drilling technicians riding as passengers and not trained in or involved with moving the platform, an article in the magazine Kommersant said.

The article alleged the rig's operators left drilling crew aboard the rig to save the cost of transporting them back to land by a separate vessel, violating Russian safety law.

Yury Melekhov, director of the rig's owning company Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka (AMNGR) in comments reported by Interfax said the presence of all 67 men was justified, saying: 'All of them were part of the rig crew.'

He told reporters approximately half of the crew were from the area of Murmansk, an Arctic Sea port city some 1,480 kilometres north of Moscow.

Families of victims would receive an insurance payment equivalent to 94,500 dollars, Melekhov said.

A government investigation into the accident was in progress, a statement from Russia's Attorney General's office said.