Search crew find missing oilman’s body
The body of a Petrofac employee who went missing from the Beryl Alpha platform in the North Sea has been found.
A Grampian Police spokesman told UpstreamOnline this morning that a remotely-operated vehicle, deployed from the standby vessel Stril Power, found 51-year-old Martin Lindsay’s body on the seafloor near the platform at about 1700 BST yesterday.
Work is now under way to recover the Teeside man’s body.
It is believed Lindsay, who was not wearing survival gear, was carrying out routine checks on the oil platform when he vanished sometime between midnight and 0300 BST on Tuesday.
The alert was raised after Lindsay failed to report to a routine muster on the ExxonMobil-operated platform, which lies about 90 miles (145 kilometres) east of Shetland.
A team of six officers from Grampian Police, including a specialist search advisor, have been ferried to the platform to carry out an investigation.
A Grampian Police spokesman could not comment on how long the team will be at the facility, saying: "There is, as yet, no time scale for the investigation."
He added: "It is too early to speculate on the causes of this tragic accident."
The spokesman also declined to comment on whether a fatal accident investigation will be opened into Lindsay’s death.
Two ExxonMobil representatives are also on the platform and are assisting with the investigation.
No one from Petrofac or ExxonMobil was immediately available for comment.
Source: Upstreamonline.com
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