MOSCOW - An oil drilling rig with 67 crew on board capsized and sank off the Russian Far East island of Sakhalin when it ran into a storm while being towed, and 51 of the crew were unaccounted for, Russian news agencies reported on Sunday.

Fourteen crew members were rescued alive from the 'Kolskaya' jack-up rig, operated by Russian exploration company Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka, two bodies were recovered and the rest of the crew were missing.

"According to reports from the scene of the rescue operation, the Kolskaya platform has sunk completely," the local head of the Emergencies Ministry, Taimuraz Kasayev, told a news briefing in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Agencies quoted officials as saying the rig capsized at about 0200 GMT on Sunday around 200 km (125 miles) off the coast of Sakhalin as it was being towed from the eastern peninsula of Kamchatka.

It appeared that the vessel had not been doing drilling work, so no oil spill was likely. The rig's destination was not  immediately clear.

While less serious that BP's Macondo disaster, when a blowout caused oil to spew for months into the Gulf of Mexico, the fatal accident will deal a blow to Russia's efforts to step up offshore oil and gas exploration.

Russia has two major offshore projects that are already producing oil off Sakhalin - Sakhalin-1, operated by Exxonmobil  and Sakhalin-2, in which state-controlled gas export monopoly Gazprom has a controlling stake.

State-controlled Rosneft this year reached a major deal with Exxon to explore for oil and gas in the Arctic Kara Sea.