A fire broke out in a distillate fuel storage tank at Charmshahr Petrochemicals Plant in Bouin-Zahra County, Qazvin Province, on Thursday, a spokesman of the Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters Union said.
“The blaze has been partly contained, but four people were killed in the incident,” Hamid Hosseini was quoted as saying by ISNA.
There are several distillate fuel storage tanks in the facility and it is very likely that similar accidents happen again in the near future, he warned.
Distillate fuel is a general classification for one of the petroleum fractions produced in conventional distillation operations. The liquid fuel is usually distilled from crude petroleum and includes diesel fuels and fuel oils.
“The fuel used to be burnt, but the Department of Environment does not permit plants to burn the fuel anymore. Nor can they export the fuel, so a large amount of fuel has piled up in refining facilities and they do not know what they are supposed to do.”
Distillate fuel are used in automobiles, locomotives and agricultural machinery as well as space heaters and power generators.
Hosseini warned that the explosion has caused heavy pollution in the province and the fire is spreading to other storage tankers.
Petrochemicals are among Iran’s major exports. Authorities have struggled to raise safety norms of the aging oil pipelines and plants that have been hit by US sanctions.
Fires and other disasters have claimed the lives of dozens of workers in the oil and petrochemical industries. A spate of fire incidents in the past few years at multiple industrial plants in Bushehr, Kermanshah and Semnan provinces also raised suspicions of sabotage and cyberattacks.
Officials have categorically rejected sabotage and the likelihood of coordinated attacks, blaming leaks on technical failures, inefficient storage facilities and poor safety inspections at private refineries and petrochemical plants.
