(Bloomberg) -- Two people are dead and 35 are injured after a chemical release at a Houston area refinery owned by Mexico’s state oil company.
The Deer Park plant halted some operations after the leak late yesterday, according to a statement from Petroleos Mexicanos. The workers who died were contractors and not Pemex employees, Chief Executive Officer Victor Rodriguez Padilla said in a press conference Friday.
“We were not able to recover the bodies until dawn due to the area remaining contaminated for a few hours,” Padilla said.
The state-owned company has come under scrutiny in recent years for its poor safety record, which including a 2021 offshore platform accident that killed five, and numerous fires at its network of oil refineries. Pemex in 2022 acquired the Deer Park plant, which had been a joint venture between the state oil company and Shell Plc.
The refinery shut at least three units following the leak, Padilla said. Among them were a coker that processes residual oil and a hydrotreater that removes sulfur from refined products.
--With assistance from Barbara Powell, Christopher Charleston and Maya Averbuch.
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