Incident Report

Subject:                     Formosa Petrochemical heads resign after fire

Date of Email report:   Mon 01/08/2011

Report Detail:

 
Both the chairman and president of the Formosa Plastics Group's (FPG's) petrochemical subsidiary tendered their resignations Saturday after fire broke out yet again at their company's complex in southern Taiwan.  FPG Chairman William Wang accepted the resignations of Formosa Petrochemical Corp. (FPC) Chairman Wilfred Wang and FPC President Su Chi-yi, and instructed that a meeting of the board of directors be convened as early as possible to decide their successors, an FPG spokesman said.  Wilfred Wang and Su are the first top-ranking FPG officials to resign over the past year, during which seven separate fires broke out at factories in its petrochemical complex in Mailiao, Yunlin County, triggering a public outcry over industrial safety. 

The latest fire struck the third refinery of the FPC at around midnight Friday and was extinguished some two hours later.  Citing an initial investigation report, Lin Chin-chi, a division chief of the Cabinet-level Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) said the fire started in a propylene drying and desulfurization plant, probably ignited by leaking propane from the old propylene recycling unit of the refinery. Lin added that the CLA has ordered FPC to shut down the propylene-recycling facility and related pipelines out of fear of toxic leakage.

Earlier, an air quality monitoring station operated by the Environmental Protection Administration in nearby Taisi Township reported 15 ppb of sulfur dioxide in the air at around 2 a.m. Although it had not reached the degree of causing pollution, people residing close to the FPG petrochemical complex were still advised to refrain from outdoor activities over the next few days.  Lin suggested that the private conglomerate should accelerate moves to replace old facilities in the vast 2,700-hectare complex. "It is the enterprise's duty to ensure the safety of its facilities," he said.

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