There were fifteen Filipino OFWs out of the 22 personnel working of the ill-fated oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. That is the second explosion in the area in just two (2) years after the famous BP Deep Water Horizon explosion which has been considered to have cause the worst environmental disaster in the US. Among the Filipino victims, one was confirmed dead and another is still missing.
These accidents concerns me a lot. As an engineer who has been working with offshore oil platforms electrical design, I kept asking myself, what could have been done to avoid such incidents. Were there some design, construction, operating flaws or just human behavior that could have caused these explosions.
I believe, these platforms were designed in conformance with API standards which as far as I know has the most stringent requirements compared to other hazardous area standards. I may be wrong. Nevertheless, whatever standards were common to both oil rig platform need to be revisited by the experts. Something may be flawed somewhere.