Five people vanished when a drilling rig sank off Gabon on Saturday night. Three of them have now been found inside the wreck.
The Gabon oil rig disaster has left a coastal community waiting and a country asking how a rig built to stand on the seabed ended up totally beneath the sea.
Vice-Admiral Charles Hubert Bekale-Meyong, chief of staff of the Gabonese Navy, said the bodies were located on Wednesday inside the wreck. Underwater robots found them. Even so, he said, the images collected “do not allow for the identification of the bodies”.
Two people are still missing. Borr Drilling, which owns and operates the rig, says recovery work is under way and the search goes on.
The Gabon oil rig disaster unfolded late on 24 October, when the Prospector 5 jack-up rig went down off the southern town of Mayumba. It had 115 people on board. About 110 were safely rescued.
The rig had not started drilling. It was being readied for a campaign for BW Energy, the Norwegian operator of the Dussafu Marin licence.
Borr’s early information on the Gabon oil rig disaster points to a punch-through. One of the rig’s legs is said to have pushed through the seabed during preload, and the rig lost stability. Preload is the stage when a jack-up is loaded to test whether the seabed can carry its weight. So the failure came at the very test meant to prove the ground was safe.
That is a preliminary finding, not a verdict. Gabon’s oil and gas ministry has opened an inquiry, and Borr says it wants a thorough investigation alongside its partners. Until that reports, there is no official cause.
The toll in the Gabon oil rig disaster has not been simple to pin down. On Sunday, Reuters reported, citing three sources, that an Indian national had been found dead. On Monday, Borr said five people remained unaccounted for and no deaths were confirmed. The navy’s Wednesday update is the clearest official word so far.
There was a fuel risk too. Borr said about 280 cubic metres of marine diesel was on board. BW Energy and Panoro Energy said on Sunday that no damage to the production facility or harmful discharge had been reported.
In the days after the Gabon oil rig disaster, President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema met survivors and relatives in Port-Gentil on 26 October. Borr chief executive Bruno Morand said the company was “deeply concerned for those who remain unaccounted for”.
Beyond the human toll, the sinking oil rig is also a business setback. Two weeks ago, BW Energy reported oil in both Dussafu appraisal wells, adding an estimated 8 million to 9 million barrels of recoverable oil. The next phase at MaBoMo was aiming for first oil in early 2027.
Now that plan has slipped. In its third quarter report on 29 October, BW Energy said the incident has delayed the MaBoMo Phase 2 campaign and that it is assessing the effect on 2027 output. Production at MaBoMo has resumed, and the 2028 target of more than 100,000 barrels a day stands.
Chief executive Carl Arnet said: “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Prospector 5 rig incident”.
Gabon has a stake too. Its national oil company holds 9% of Dussafu, behind BW Energy on 73.5% and Panoro on 17.5%. A delay there is felt well beyond one company’s balance sheet.
Oil is flowing again at MaBoMo. Two people have still not come home to their families. Whatever the inquiry finds about the Gabon oil rig disaster, that is the number that should not get lost.
