A still image from video footage shows the oil platform on fire in the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan.

AFP/Reuters
Baku
Thirty oil workers were missing yesterday after the rig they were working on in the Caspian Sea was engulfed by a fire, Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR said.
Another 32 people were rescued, the company said on its website, listing the names of all 62 workers caught up in the disaster.
The office of President Ilham Aliyev said earlier that one person had died in the blaze that broke out on Friday, with the rescue operation to retrieve the other staff hampered by a violent storm.
The storm had on Friday damaged a gas line on the platform in the deep water Guneshli section of the Azeri-Chiraq-Guneshli offshore oil field, causing the fire, SOCAR said in a statement.
Spectacular footage on Azeri television showed the platform engulfed in flames in the midst of a raging sea.
“Despite bad weather conditions, 32 people could be saved,” Aliyev said. “According to preliminary information, one person died. At this time, rescue operations continue.”
Azerbaijan’s state prosecutor’s office said the person had died on Friday night when the lifeboat he was in with three others was hit by heavy winds.
Staff had taken refuge in lifeboats that had been lowered to 10m above the water, prosecutors added.
Earlier reports said that 32 workers had been killed.
“According to our information, 32 workers died, while 42 workers were rescued last night. ... The fire on the platform was finally extinguished,” said Mirvari Gakhramanly, head of the independent Azerbaijan’s Oil Workers’ Rights Protection Committee.
The oil rig’s stricken gas line had been damaged at 1340 GMT on Friday by winds of up to 144kph (90 mph), the prosecution service said.
A mainly Muslim country of 9mn wedged between Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan is a key partner in projects to deliver Caspian Sea energy reserves to the West through pipelines to Turkey, bypassing Russia.
In a separate incident, SOCAR said on Friday that three workers were missing from another of its offshore oil platforms in the Caspian after an accident during the storm.
The workers were still missing as of yesterday.
Fourteen workers were killed in accidents on SOCAR’s oil and gas platforms in 2014.