For the second day in a row a massive fire at Tehran Oil Refinery in the Iranian capital continued to burn out of control, but ultimately was extinguished after long hours of firefighting, the CEO of the refinery said.
“The fire in the tanks of Tehran Oil Refinery was completely extinguished after hours of uninterrupted firefighting operations,” said Hamed Armanfar.
The fire ignited after an explosion at the refinery on Wednesday night.
“Although the foam spraying operation started around noon today (Thursday), the product in the substrates was re-ignited in the face of oxygen and due to the lack of information about the exact amount of product in the tanks. The exact time of the complete extinguishing of the fire was unpredictable,” said refinery public relations director Shaker Khafaei.
“Immediately, the operation of clearing the damaged tanks has started and we are trying to resume production of the refinery as soon as possible,” Armanfar added, according to the Shana petro energy information network.
Refinery officials have been concerned about the likely impact of news about the oil refinery fire. A spokesperson for the Tehran Oil Refinery underlined, “It is necessary for news agencies to publish accurate news and to refrain from transmitting incorrect and speculative information about the dimensions and details of this incident.”
Nevertheless, Khafaei dismissed reports of possible sabotage, according to Shana and Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
Khafaei told reporters “the reasons for this incident are being investigated by the relevant managers and inspection teams.”
He ruled out the possibility of sabotage. “Fortunately, there were no casualties in this incident,” Khafaei said.
The fire allegedly started with a leak of hot slops – the hot petroleum materials recycled from the crude oil refining process – which ignited flames in the Cold Slops tanks, which have a capacity of 20,000 barrels, Khafaei said.
There were no casualties reported, according to Shana, ISNA and Tasnim News Agency.