Over a year after a blast occurred in the Rs19,000 crore Guru Gobind Singh Oil Refinery at Bathinda, another incident of fire took place in the refinery on Friday morning.
A major fire broke out at Bathinda’s refinery reportedly after a blast in the vacuum gas oil treating unit with flames as high as 40 feet emanating from it. No casualty was reported in the fire incident but refinery employees and residents of nearby village were in panic. The residents of the nearby villages claimed the blast, which resulted in fire, shook their houses. Nineteen fire tenders, including 15 of the refinery and four of Bathinda municipal corporation, controlled the fire in over five hours. The Refinery authorities have ordered a probe to find the cause of the fire. A similar blast took place on April 8, 2013, after which the residents of small village citing pollution from refinery had decided to settle away. They all are now awaiting the State Government’s move for their settlement at some other place away from refinery.
A fire was reported in its vacuum gas oil treating unit at about 6.30 am, and the unit was immediately shutdown.
“No one was injured in the fire that was brought under control,” Hindustan Petroleum and Mittal Energy CEO and Managing Director Prabh Das said in an official statement.
He added that the fire was reported on Friday morning at one of the pipelines from the vacuum gas oil (VGO) unit, which removes sulphur from crude oil. The VGO unit had to be shut down because of the fire but the rest of the nine million tonnes a year refinery is operating normally, he added.
The refinery is run by a joint venture of public sector company Hindustan Petroleum and Mittal Energy owned by steel magnate lN Mittal. HP owns 49 per cent share each, while two percent share is held by financial institutions.