Two dead, seven injured after explosions and fire at Russian oilfield - Upstream Online

Two dead, seven injured after explosions and fire at Russian oilfield | Upstream Online

Two people died and seven others have been severely injured after a major incident at an oilfield in Russia, according to the Khanty-Mansiysk regional department of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

The department said a fire and two explosions, thought to have been caused by nitrogen bottles overheating, were reported late yesterday evening at the Talinskoye field in West Siberia.

Firefighters arrived at the remote accident site about an hour and a half after receiving the distress call, discovering that three temporary dwelling units and another three specialised equipment units were on fire.

After the fire was extinguished in just over one hour, the department reported that two people were found dead and seven others were severely injured, mostly the result of burns.

Russian social media channels have informally identified first names and family names of one dead and six of the injured workers, with the names of two other workers still unknown at publication time.

Five oil workers have been taken to a regional hospital in the nearby town of Nyagan, while two others were transported to hospitals in the city of Surgut and Pyt-Yakh, regional authorities said.

The Talinskoye field is operated by Nyaganneft, a regional subsidiary of privately held Nezavisimaya Neftegazovaya Kompaniya (NNK).

Despite estimated production of 320,000 barrels of oil per day, or 3% of the country’s total output, NNK keeps low public profile and does not have its own website.

Moscow-based newspaper Izvestia quoted an NNK representative as saying that company officials are conducting an investigation at the accident site, with additional information on suspected causes of the accident to become available later.

The Russian Investigative Committee — a governmental body that carries out investigations into major incidents — said in a statement on Tuesday that it believes the fire started as a result of "violations of safety rules during repair and restoration work with the help of a coiled tubing unit.

"Violations had led to a breakout of a steam-oil cloud which subsequently ignited," the group said.

Moscow-based news agency Neft i Kapital said that the well workover job was performed by Russia's Paker-Service. Earlier, Paker-Service identified itself as one of the two country's contractors that has its own coiled tubing manufacturing capacity, located in the city of Stavropol.

Talinskoye is a legacy field discovered in 1976 and brought on stream in 1981. According to Russia’s Energy Ministry, Nyaganneft reported oil production of about 34,000 barrels per day in 2021.

The latest production figures for Nyaganneft are not available because authorities stopped reporting oil industry metrics soon after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Coiled tubing - as a faster and less expensive alternative to rig-based well workovers - was widely adopted in the Russian oil industry following the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the arrival of international oilfield service providers.

Most of these western providers left the Russian market or halted technical support after the Ukraine invasion.