Report Subject: Various News Reports Date of Email report: Thu 05/06/2008 Report Detail: Kuwait - Mina Abdullah Refinery Fire Kuwaiti fireman attempt to control a blaze after a huge blast at Kuwait's biggest oil refinery in Al-Ahmadi, 40 km south of Kuwait City, in 2000. An Indian labourer has been injured in a fire at a chemical plant in Kuwait's oil-rich southern region that was apparently the result of a blast, officials said.(AFP/File/Raed Qutena) India - Explosion forces closure of Panna-Mukta oil field; One fatality An explosion at a processing platform of the Panna-Mukta oil and gas field, off the coast of Mumbai, killed one person and stopped production of 40,000 barrels of crude and five million cubic metres of gas. The supply shortfall will have to be met by imports if supply is not resumed in 3-4 days, industry officials said. The Panna-Mukta, and the adjacent Tapti gas field, is operated by a consortium of Reliance Industries, British Gas and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). Company officials said gas output would be resumed in a day, but oil pumping would take longer to resume. State-run refiner IOC buys crude from Panna-Mukta, from where it gets four parcels of 35,000 tonnes a month. "The fire on the (Panna) platform was local. For safety measures we have shut down oil and gas production temporarily (since June 3)," said a senior Reliance official. He added that gas production would resume tomorrow while resumption of oil production would take longer. Industry officials said getting back to full production levels could take 2-3 weeks. All the oil from the two fields is sold to Indian Oil Corporation's refineries while the gas is sold to GAIL India, the country's largest transporter and marketer of gas. Australia - Apache pipeline fire - Varanus Island, Western Australia Hot spot: A water cannon cools the blast area at the Varanus Island processing plant.
A pipeline rupture and fire at Apache Corporations Vanarus Island facility in Western Australia has reduce the supply of natural gas to Western Australia by 30%. 153 employees have been evacuated, 13 employees remain on the island to monitor the situation. Steven Farris, Apache’s president and CEO said “No one was injured, all personnel are safe, and the rupture and fire appear to be contained on the island…At this time, we cannot estimate when throughput will be resumed.”. The facility was producing approximately 330 million cubic feet(MMcf) of natural gas and 8,000 barrels of crude oil per day, this has been reduced to 200 MMcf and 5,000 barrels per day. Western Australian Minister for Energy Fran Logan said that residential supplies were unlikely to be affect but has called on Western Australians to conserve the use of Natural gas. Minister Logan said that Apache supply primarily large volume users like to Alinta Gas and Alcoa and the major industrial user user will be hit the hardest. The aluminum refineries owned Alcoa which are dependent on natural gas have switched to diesel to maintain production. Apache representatives including its managing director Tim Wall and fire experts from Singapore are heading the site to extinguish the fire and assess the damage. Mr Wall said during a news conference in Perth today that a small fire on a vent had already been extinguished. Apache has also declared a clause in its supply contracts to remove liability for unavoidable catastrophes that prevent them from fulfilling obligations under the contract. China - Fire at Sinopec closes two ethylene units BEIJING, June 3 (Reuters) - A fire broke out on Tuesday night at Maoming refinery, Sinopec's second-largest, forcing the closure of two ethylene units with total capacity of over one million tonnes per year, an industry source said. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured or killed in the blaze in far southern China, which was likely caused by lightning, the source said. The fire broke out at a 640,000 tonnes per year unit which was connected to another unit with 380,000 tpy capacity. Both had to be closed down and it was unclear when they might be reopened. By late evening the fire had largely been extinguished, although the vice-mayor of Maoming and senior company officials had rushed to the site to supervise the work. Before the fire, Maoming had already planned to cut ethylene output by 10,000 tonnes in June in order to increase refined oil product output. An explosion at the same plant in April caused the closure of a hydrocracker with annual capacity of one million tonnes. |
