MOSCOW (Reuters) - A drilling rig with 67 organisation on house capsized and sank off Russia's distant eastern island of Sakhalin on Sunday while being towed by a winter storm, withdrawal some-more than 50 passed or blank in a icy Sea of Okhotsk.
Emergency officials pronounced a organisation of an icebreaker and tugboat discovered 14 workers alive from a jack-up rig, a 'Kolskaya', that was operated by a Russian offshore scrutiny firm. They recovered 4 bodies from a water.
"The Kolskaya keeled to a side ... and sank within 20 minutes. The abyss of a H2O during a site is 1,042 metres (3,400 feet)," Russia's sovereign H2O ride group pronounced on a website.
Four of a survivors, pang from hypothermia, were airlifted by helicopter to land and taken to sanatorium after a disaster struck during 12:45 p.m. (0145 GMT).
The rest of a organisation were missing, 200 km (125 miles) off a seashore of remote Sakhalin island. The H2O heat was one grade Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit), giving survivors around 30 mins before frozen to death, according to nautical and rescue websites.
Three rescue craft, as good as helicopters, were sent to scour a waters for survivors from a supply owned by Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka (AMNGR), a section of state-owned Zarubezhneft.
"There is no ecological danger. The vessel was carrying a smallest volume of fuel as it was being tugged by dual craft," pronounced a orator for AMNGR.
The occurrence was a blow to efforts by Russia, a world's largest appetite producer, to step adult offshore oil and gas scrutiny to wand off a long-term decrease in onshore production.
The jack-up rig, that has 3 support legs that can be extended to a sea building while a carcass floats on a surface, was streamer from Kamchatka to Sakhalin when it overturned in inclement conditions with a bloat of adult to 6 metres.
"(President) Dmitry Medvedev has systematic all required assistance be supposing to a victims of a drilling height collision and has systematic a examine into a resources of a detriment of a platform," a Kremlin said. The Emergencies Ministry pronounced it would work by Sunday night.
GAZPROM OFFSHORE DRILLING
Russia's sovereign Investigative Committee, that answers to a president, pronounced it would examine a collision and would doubt discovered workers as good as those obliged for organising a towing of a craft.
"The defilement of reserve manners during a towing of a drilling rig, as good as towing though care of a continue conditions ... are believed to be a means of a (disaster)," investigators pronounced on their website.
The 'Neftegaz-55' tugboat, also owned by AMNGR, had been towing a Kolskaya and took partial in a hunt effort, though pulled out after pang carcass repairs from a high waves.
The tug, carrying many of a organisation discovered from a rig, had taken on H2O and was perplexing to baggy to port. An icebreaker, a 'Magadan', was still during a scene.
As night fell, an atmosphere hunt group was called off, and another was set to resume a query for survivors a subsequent day.
"With daylight a hunt from a atmosphere will continue with an Mi-8 helicopter along with a sea teams," group Itar-Tass reported an Emergencies Ministry central as saying.
The rig, built in Finland in 1985, had been operative on a teenager gas prolongation plan in a Sea of Okhotsk for a section of state-controlled gas trade corner Gazprom, a association said.
Russia's esteem offshore gas and oil fields distortion northeast of Sakhalin. Two vital offshore projects are already producing oil and gas off a island: Sakhalin-1, operated by Exxonmobil and Sakhalin-2, in that Gazprom has a determining stake.
The disaster is doubtful to severely impact oil or gas production. AMNGR pronounced a vessel was no longer underneath agreement when it sank.
Operating conditions in a region, explored by Soviet geologists in a 1960s and 1970s, are among a harshest for Russian appetite companies.
WINTER CONDITIONS
Winter mostly lasts 220-240 days in a waters off Sakhalin, where a categorical companies handling are ExxonMobil, Gazprom, and Royal Dutch Shell. They furnish oil and gas, infrequently in icebound conditions, for trade mostly to Asian markets.
Sakhalin-2, in that Shell and Mitsui also have stakes, produces 10 million tonnes per year of liquefied healthy gas during Russia's usually LNG plant in a pier of Prigorodnoye for trade to Asia, most of it to Japan.
Each tanker of wanton oil constructed by during a 160,000 barrels-per-day Sakhalin-1 project, operated by ExxonMobil, is escorted by dual icebreakers when ice density reaches 60 cm (2 feet).
State-controlled Rosneft this year reached a vital understanding with Exxon to try for oil and gas in a Kara Sea, to a north of a Russian mainland, a mostly unexplored segment estimated to reason over 100 billion barrels of oil.
Poor infrastructure and ongoing corner-cutting in Russia have contributed to several sea disasters, particularly a falling of a chief submarine Kursk in a Barents Sea in Aug 2000, in that all 118 aboard were killed.
(Additional stating by Douglas Busvine; modifying by Alistair Lyon)
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