Luis Felipe Puente, head of federal emergency services, told
Reuters that three people had died in the blast. The governor of Veracruz
state, Javier Duarte, later said 105 were hospitalized, including 58 Pemex
workers, according to his official Twitter account.
Pemex said the explosion, which sent a huge, dark plume of
smoke billowing upwards, occurred just after 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) at the
facility's chlorinate 3 plant near the port of Coatzacoalcos, one of the
company's top oil export hubs.
Local emergency officials said hundreds of people had been
evacuated from the site. Television footage showed an initial burst of flames
followed by a tower of thick smoke. A company official said local oil exports
were unaffected.
What caused the blast was unclear, but Pemex warned local
residents to keep away from the site due to what it described as a dissipating
cloud of toxic fumes. TV footage showed rainclouds gathering above the plant as
evening fell.
Pemex Chief Executive Jose Antonio Gonzalez was traveling to
Coatzacoalcos late on Wednesday to oversee the response.
Petroquimica Mexicana de Vinilo, or PMV, a vinyl
petrochemical plant that is a joint venture between Pemex's petrochemical unit
and Mexican plastic pipe maker Mexichem was the facility hit by the blast.
Operated by Mexichem, the plant lies within Pemex's larger
Pajaritos petrochemical complex. Mexichem said in a statement the explosion
occurred in an ethylene unit at the plant. The company could not be immediately
reached for further comment.
In February, a fire killed a worker at the PMV plant, which
makes vinyl chloride monomer, also known as chloroethene, an industrial
chemical used to produce plastic piping.
The incident occurred just weeks after three workers were
killed and seven injured when a fire broke out on a Pemex oil-processing
platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
It also came as Pemex implements deep cost cuts to cope with
the rout in oil prices, and seeks to stem a slide in output. Mexico is in the
midst of a historic push to lure private investors to revive its oil industry.
Pemex, which enjoyed a decades-long monopoly over Mexico's
oil and gas industry until an energy reform opened up the sector in 2014, has
experienced a series of high-profile accidents.
In 2013, at least 37 people were killed by a blast at its
Mexico City headquarters, and 26 people died in a fire at a Pemex natural gas
facility in northern Mexico in September 2012.
A 2015 fire at its Abkatun Permanente platform in the oil-rich
Bay of Campeche affected oil output and cost the company up to $780 million.
Pemex said last year it had reduced its annual accident rate
in 2014 by more than 33 percent. But a Reuters investigation found that Pemex
was reducing its accident rate by including hours worked by office staff in its
calculations.
Source: Reuters
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