DEER PARK, Texas (AP) – The two employees who died after a hydrogen sulfide leak at a Houston-area oil refinery were employees of a subcontractor performing maintenance work, the head of Pemex, the state oil company, said Friday. Mexican company that operates the plant.
The two “were in the directly affected area, and they received the direct impact of the gas,” said the director of Pemex, Víctor Rodríguez, during a press conference in Mexico City. Both bodies have been recovered.
The Mexican Secretary of Energy, Luz Elena González, stated that “there is no longer any risk” as a result of the leak and that the cause of it is being investigated.
Previously, Pemex said in a statement that operations at two units of the oil refinery had been “proactively stopped” in order to mitigate the impact.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the two workers died and nearly three dozen others were taken to hospitals or treated at the scene after Thursday’s hydrogen sulfide leak at the Deer Park facility.
No names have been released and Gonzalez said the remains of the two dead workers were taken to the Harris County medical examiner.
Hydrogen sulfide is a smelly gas that can be toxic at high levels. González explained that the gas leak occurred while working on a flange at the plant, which is part of a group of refineries and oil plants that make Houston the petrochemical heart of the country.
Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton said city officials issued a “shelter in place” order but lifted it hours later after air monitoring showed there was no risk to the surrounding community.
“Other than the smell, we have not had any verifiable monitoring of the air to show that anything came out of the facility,” Mouton stated.
The escape prompted the second shelter-in-place order in Deer Park in just a few weeks. Last month, a pipeline fire that burned for four days forced the evacuation of surrounding neighborhoods.
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