Iran’s largest oil refinery fixes leak, explosion ruled out
Senior staff members at Iran's Abadan Oil Refinery have rejected reports suggesting there has been an explosion in the sprawling facility located in a southern oil-rich region of Iran, saying workers and technicians swiftly fixed a leak that had been detected in the catalytic cracker of the refinery early on Saturday.
Head of safety at the refinery Hamid Reza Torki said that the leak incident that started on 11 a.m. local time and ended several hours later on Saturday had caused no casualties.
The announcement came after social media accounts and other reports suggested there had been a major explosion in Abadan Oil Refinery, one of the oldest and largest refineries in the world.
“News published in the social media about explosion incident and injuries of staff of the refinery are not true,” the IRIB News quoted Jamshid Khalifeh, who serves as production manager at the refinery.
The leak is the second of its type occurring in less than a week in Abadan refinery, a facility which is responsible for a fourth of the entire fuel supply in Iran.
Authorities in the local environment protection agency in Khuzestan province, where the refinery is located, had said earlier that they would lodge a legal complaint against the refinery over alleged pollution caused by the leakage.
However, a statement issued on Saturday said that the “pollution problem had been completely fixed”.
The statement said the thick black and white smoke seen billowing from the refinery is recent days was a product of restart of catalytic crackers.
“Until conditions are back to normal, there is a possibility for black smoke in the refinery’s flare and a small amount of white catalyst in the chimney exhaust of the cat cracker unit,” said the statement.
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