The search con­tin­ues for the body of Pe­te Phillip, a work­er with Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, who went miss­ing at sea on De­cem­ber 22 fol­low­ing a col­lapse of the com­pa­ny’s off­shore rig.

In its lat­est up­date, the South Oropouche-based com­pa­ny re­port­ed that it re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to search and re­cov­ery ef­forts in col­lab­o­ra­tion with state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd. The com­pa­ny em­pha­sised that this phase of op­er­a­tions pri­ori­tis­es the safe­ty of all per­son­nel while main­tain­ing the ut­most re­spect for those im­pact­ed by the in­ci­dent.

Well Ser­vices said yes­ter­day an ad­di­tion­al com­pa­ny with un­der­wa­ter cam­era sys­tem was en­gaged to help in the search and re­cov­ery but there was still no sign of Phillip.

“Well Ser­vices is al­so main­tain­ing on­go­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sup­port for Mr Phillip’s fam­i­ly,” the com­pa­ny said.

Ac­cord­ing to an ini­tial re­port, the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3.09 am on De­cem­ber 22 aboard Rig 110, lo­cat­ed in the Her­itage Off­shore East Field. At the time, the rig, which housed 75 per­son­nel, was en­gaged in drilling ac­tiv­i­ties. The col­lapse re­sult­ed in one re­port­ed in­jury, with the in­di­vid­ual in sta­ble con­di­tion and in re­ceipt of med­ical care.

Phillip, how­ev­er, re­mained miss­ing.

Well Ser­vices tran­si­tioned from a search and res­cue mis­sion to a search and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion be­cause of the length of time which elapsed, and the di­min­ished the like­li­hood of sur­vival.

Phillip’s wife, Can­da­cy, who is preg­nant with their fifth child, ex­pressed deep con­cern about their fam­i­ly’s fu­ture. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, she said her hus­band had been the sole bread­win­ner and was ex­pect­ed to re­turn home for Christ­mas Day.

“I am wor­ried about what comes next,” Can­da­cy said.