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Norwegian ship capsizes off North Sea oil rig: coastguard
AFP
LONDON
Petroleumworld.com 04 13 07
Ten members of a 15-strong crew have been rescued after a Norwegian oil rig support vessel capsized off the Shetland Isles, off the northeast Scottish coast, the coastguard said Thursday.
The Bourbon Dolphin capsized about 75 nautical miles (139 kilometres) west of the north Shetlands near the Transocean Rather oil platform at about 5:00 pm (1600 GMT), the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said.
All of the crew are Norwegian nationals.
"We are looking for five people and we have got the Subsea Viking, a support vessel designed for diving operations, en route to the scene and we are trying to muster divers," said Mark Clark of the MCA.
Clark said that with darkness falling, rescuers were urgently trying to get the divers to the scene, saying that the MCA "may have to get them from the mainland and fly them out or there may be some on rigs."
He added that the five still missing were feared trapped under the hull of the ship:
"We cannot see anyone therefore we can only assume they are under the hull."
"If people are under the hull then we don't know how much air they have or whether they have managed to struggle into their survival suits -- and the water is around five degrees (celcius) at the moment."
Michael Mulford, from the Royal Air Force base at Kinloss, northeast Scotland, told Sky News television an RAF Nimrod plane and a specialist North Sea rescue helicopter had been sent to the scene.
"One moment that vessel would have been alongside a rig and for some reason ... she has capsized. That creates an immediate emergency situation 100 miles away from the nearest island," he said.
Neither Mulford nor Turner had details about the condition of those rescued, nor weather conditions in the area at the time.
AFP 12 2044 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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