Massive blaze breaks out at oil refinery outside Mumbai, India

Promit Mukherjee
Reuters
Tue, 03 Sep 2019 08:58 UTC

© Twitter / SANDEEPDALVI84

Four people have been killed and three seriously injured in a fire at an oil and gas processing plant on the outskirts of Mumbai run by India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp, a local police official and a company source said on Tuesday.

"We're checking with the local hospital for further updates, but so far we have four confirmed dead," said a company source, who asked not to be named as ONGC have not issued any official statement on casualties.

The company declined to comment, but said in a tweet that a fire broke out early Tuesday morning at the Uran plant site in western Maharashtra state and was put out within two hours.

"No impact on oil processing. Gas diverted to Hazira Plant. Situation is being assessed," the company said in the tweet.

The Uran plant processes nearly half of the crude oil that ONGC sells to refineries and 12% of its natural gas sales, said a senior company executive, who also declined to be named. The plant is also a major supplier of cooking gas.

ONGC had still to determine if the fire has affected its crude oil processing and supply capabilities, the first source said.

ONGC supplies crude oil from the plant to the Mumbai-based refineries of Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum as well as natural gas to city gas distribution company Mahanagar Gas Ltd in Mumbai.

"Gas supply to MGLs (Mahanagar Gas) City Gate Station at Wadala has been severely affected," MGL said in a statement.

The company said it was trying to ensure gas supplies to households are maintained as a priority, but warned that some compressed natural gas fuel stations across Mumbai may not operate until gas supply from Uran is restored.

Compressed natural gas fuels a vast majority of the buses, taxis and rickshaws in India's financial hub, Mumbai. It was not immediately clear if the fuel station outages could affect public transport in the city.

BPCL and HPCL did not immediately reply to a mail seeking comment.

Comment: RT reports:

The fire broke out in a storm water drainage system around 7am local time on Tuesday morning at the facility. Fire and emergency management services are on the scene and have contained the fire, though local residents have been evacuated and the area cordoned off by police, according to local media.

At least eight workers at the plant have been hospitalized with burn injuries, and up to five deaths have been reported so far. Oil processing at the plant has not been affected, though gas has been diverted to another plant at Hazira in Gujarat, 330km away. The cause of the fire is not yet known.

This comes a few days after another explosion at a chemical factory, also in India: 13 dead, 72 injured in gas explosion at chemical factory, India

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