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* Fire burns, bodies not found from worst Azeri oil accident
* Dec.4 storm on Caspian caused platform fires
* Workers representative questions equipment, procedure
* Azeri SOCAR oil company reviews safety measures
By Nailia Bagirova
BAKU, Jan 12 (Reuters) - For the survivors of a lifeboatwhich hung between a blazing oil rig and 10-metre waves on awind-lashed sea, the horror lives on while the search for thecomrades they saw die is not complete.
A fire still burns from the worst ever accident inAzerbaijan's oil industry. An enquiry continues on the Dec. 4disaster which took around 30 lives when a 27-hour storm ragedacross the Caspian Sea.
"When the fire started, we sat in two lifeboats, but did notput them down on the sea surface as we were afraid that a stormcould break them into pieces," Allakhverdi Mamedov, who was incharge of the stricken platform above the Guneshli oil field,told Reuters.
"We were sitting and waiting for rescuers, when the hawsersof the other boat ripped, it dropped into the water andcollapsed. Hawsers, which were holding other boats, broke asthey did not withstand the pressure from the storm."
That lifeboat was sent plunging into the sea where theimpact broke it up, spilling those on board. Only two workersfrom that boat survived.
Those in Mamedov's lifeboat spent the night dangling fromthe platform. They were only rescued the following day when,after the storm had subsided somewhat, a rescue helicopter wasable to land on the platform.
Thirty workers were lost after Guneshli, operated by Azeristate energy company SOCAR caught fire after the storm causedsome of the its production equipment to collapse, damaging anatural gas pipeline.
"I thought it was the last day of my life. We were afraidthat the platform would blow up. The picture was horrible -heavy wind, high waves ... My very close friends died. It's verypainful to recollect that events," another worker, who declinedto give his name, said.
Rescuers have discovered nine bodies and search for 21 moreas well as three workers who were swept into the sea fromanother platform some 11.5 miles (18.5 kilometres) away.
The rig accident was the worst since the U.S. drilling shipSeacrest capsized during a typhoon in the Gulf of Thailand in1989, killing more than 90 people.
The previous biggest accident on an offshore oil platform inAzerbaijan killed 22 men in 1957.
"This is the biggest tragedy in SOCAR's history. The fire onGuneshli platform was the biggest in Azerbaijan's oil industrysince 1949, when the country started offshore oil production,"SOCAR's vice president, Khalik Mamedov, told Reuters.
"We lost 33 men in one day and that's horrible."
"The chances of finding anyone alive equal zero," saidSOCAR's first vice president, Khoshbakht Usifzade. "We lost ourfriends ... But we do our best to find bodies and hand them overto relatives." .
Azeri and American specialists worked together to put outfires from oil and gas wells.
"Thank to these efforts, the fire was extinguished onseveral wells, including one, where there was the risk of an oilspill, but some gas wells are still on fire," said BalamirzaAgaragimov, chief engineer at Azneft, SOCAR's production union.
SAFETY MEASURES
"There were abnormal weather conditions that day and wecould not expect that. The wind, which lasted for 27 hours,lifted waves to 8-10 metres height," SOCAR's Khalik Mamedovsaid.
Critics questioned safety measures on the platform, whichwas built in 1984 with a 50-year operation term.
"There were some shortcomings in the gas pipeline on theplatform, which were difficult to identify, when the weather wasnormal," said Mirvari Gakhramanly, head of Azerbaijan's OilWorkers' Rights Protection Committee.
Gakhramanly, who was the first to report fatalities, saidthat mistakes had been made during the evacuation.
Usifzade said the company would review safety measures onits platforms, many of which were built in Soviet times.
"We are not going to sit on our hands, of course ... Ourengineers will think about new safety measures on platforms incase of very high waves," he said.
He added the company also planned to buy new lifeboats.
"Those lifeboats were modern and had been purchased in SouthKorea. But it seems we need to buy other lifeboats with adifferent modification, which are more suitable for our weatherconditions," Usifzade said.
The platform had daily production of 920 tonnes of oil and1.08 million cubic metres of gas. It is one of 14 platforms onthe Guneshli oilfield. SOCAR produces about 60 percent of itsoil from Guneshli.
Unlike for other major oil producers, foreign companies donot provide servicing for SOCAR-led platforms, a total number of193 and most of them build in 1980s.
British oil major BP, which accounts for around 75percent of Azeri oil production, runs a total of eightplatforms. BP said that its operations were not affected by theoutage.
Valery Nesterov, a veteran analyst with Moscow-basedSberbank CIB, said that offshore oil and gas production isalways associated with big risk, even if safety is on thehighest level.
"Such accidents are again raising a big question over theneed to explore Arctic offshore," Nesterov said. (Additional reporting by Olesya Astakhova in Moscow; Writing byMargarita Antidze; Editing by Katya Golubkova, Christian Loweand William Hardy)
