A gas leak in an underwater pipeline caused a fire in the sea off Mexico.
The fire 150 meters in front of an oil rig of the Ku-Maloob-Zaap oil production facility in the Gulf of Mexico was extinguished on Friday after five and a half hours, said the state-owned oil company Pemex.
A video that is supposed to show the fire also spread on social media outside of Mexico - some Twitter users described the circularly sizzling embers in the water as “the eye of fire”.
According to Pemex, there were no injuries and no people had to be brought to safety.
The fire was fought from ships and the connecting valves in the pipeline were closed.
Normal operations have been restored and the incident is being investigated, it said.
The head of the Asea energy and environmental authority, Ángel Carrizales, wrote on Twitter that no oil had leaked.
Pemex is one of the most heavily indebted energy companies in the world.
Due to a lack of investment in modern technology, oil production in Mexico has been falling steadily for years.
Former Pemex boss Emilio Lozoya (2012-2016) was charged with corruption charges and extradited from Spain to Mexico last July.
In 1979 there was an oil outbreak on a Pemex drilling platform, in which it is estimated that at least half a million tons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico over almost 300 days. There, too, in 2010 an explosion on the “Deepwater Horizon” drilling rig leased by the BP Group triggered the largest environmental disaster of its kind to date. More than 1000 kilometers of coast were polluted, hundreds of thousands of animals died.