A fire at a petrochemical complex in western Iran was extinguished within hours after it broke out on Friday.
The blaze at the Bistoon Petrochemical Company in Kermanshah Province was doused "within a few hours", Shana quoted firefighters at the scene of the accident as saying.
The complex produces linear alkyl benzene (LAB) and heavy alkyl benzene (HAB). There were no immediate reports on fatalities or the scale of the damage.
Marzieh Shahdaei, managing director of National Petrochemical Company, said the fire in a tank in Bistoon will not affect the production process.
Underscoring that other units of the complex had not been affected by the blaze, she added that Bistoon’s main units "had already been out of service due to an overhaul."
Shahdaei, who also is a deputy oil minister, told IRNA that the cause of the fire was the accumulation of flammable gases beneath the tank’s ceiling, which was ignited by a spark. The reason behind the spark is still unknown.
The fire marks the second of such incident in less than four weeks.
On July 6, a massive fire broke out in Bouali Sina Petrochemical Complex in the southern province of Khuzestan in what was described as the largest incident in the oil/gas industry in recent times.
The fire was put out after three days. Officials said the conflagration was triggered by leak of paraxylene, a highly flammable fuel. Nine people were injured.
Early estimates said the Bouali blaze caused €60 million in damages, Mohammad Rezaie, head of the fire insurance department at the Iran Insurance Company said in a statement.
