The Hindu Business Line : Fire at Reliance refinery complex at Jamnagar

Reliance Industries received a jolt on Wednesday morning when a fire at its Jamnagar complex led to a shut-down of some of its units and seriously injured one of its employees.

The fire which broke out at 10.40 a.m. was brought under control by Reliance Plant and Fire Fighting Personnel in less than two hours, said a statement from the company.

The flames that rose to a height of 40 ft were visible from several kilometres away, and covered the refinery in a thick cloud of smoke, according to eyewitness reports.

The authorities swung into action, summoning all the available fire tenders from the neighbouring industrial units and evacuating the residential areas, mainly those where the labourers lived.

The Reliance employee who was injured may be brought to Mumbai for treatment, said sources. There were no other human casualties, said the company.

The fire happened in one of the vacuum gas oil hydrotreaters that separates sulphur from crude.

This unit, one of the 40 in the Jamnagar complex, had to be shut down.

As a precautionary measure, the neighbouring `diesel hydrotreating unit — II' was shut down as well, said the company, adding that it expected to restart the same shortly. "All other refinery units, including both the crude units and petrochemical units, are operating normally," said the statement.

DAMAGE NOT ESTIMATED

Reliance officials said they had not yet established the cause of the fire, and were still estimating the extent of damage.

Nor did they tell when operations would fully resume at the plant.

This is the first instance of fire at Reliance's Jamnagar refinery, though it has previously been affected by a cyclone in 1998 and then the Bhuj earthquake of 2001.

The Jamnagar refinery processes 6.6 lakh barrels of crude a day.

The crude is first distilled at the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) and the output fed into the two vacuum gas oil hydrotreaters, one of which has been affected, said sources.

As per early reports, the shortfall due to accident is estimated around 1,00,000 tonnes of LPG, said senior Petroleum Ministry officials. The oil companies already have LPG stocks of 2,80,000 tonnes to meet any emergency, they said.

LPG supply

The Union Petroleum Minister, Mr Murli Deora, said that though liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supply is unlikely to be affected due to the accident, his Ministry was on alert.

"We have alerted the state-owned oil companies and if required we will import extra LPG. We will ensure that consumers would not be affected," he said.

The Petroleum Secretary, Mr M.S. Srinivasan, maintained that the fuel supply would not be affected due to the accident.

Annual domestic LPG consumption is 10.5 million tonnes, of which RIL supplies 2.5 mt, hence, the impact of the accident would not be much, said the officials.

However, depending on the situation the state-owned companies would be requested to import extra LPG. To begin with, the companies would be asked to import additional 65,000 tonnes, they said.

Initially, IndianOil will import four to five cargoes of LPG. Each cargo comprises 13,000 tonnes of LPG.

"If the need for more imports arises then we would speak to our traditional suppliers in Saudi, Kuwait and Malaysia," said an official.

Analysts, too, said the impact due to the fire on the domestic hydrocarbon fuel situation will be marginal. "Reliance is a major supplier of LPG in the country. Any hitch in the company's production usually upsets the supply equation. But with top government authorities stating that there is enough inventory for the next 20 days, there should not be any massive shortage," said Mr Raj Gandhi, Research Analyst, Oil & Petroleum, UTI Securities.

`Stock won't swing'

Market watchers said they do not see any major swing in its share prices on Thursday.

"The incident is too small to affect the share prices of Reliance on Thursday. There may be some nervousness, but we do not see any major swings,'' said a stock dealer.

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