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Blaze hits US-licensed residue unit at India's Visakh refinery, no injuries
The overnight fire at Hindustan Petroleum's 15-million-ton plant broke out in a unit running Chevron Lummus Global technology. Police reported no casualties, while the company has yet to say whether output was affected as India imports crude at a record pace.
A fire broke out late Monday at a storage tank inside the Residue Upgradation Facility of Hindustan Petroleum Corp.'s Visakh Refinery in the southeastern Indian port city of Visakhapatnam, the newest and most complex section of a plant that traces its origins to American oil companies. Police said no one was killed or injured.
Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner Shankhabrata Bagchi said the blaze was confined to the tank and posed no threat to other parts of the refinery. Malkapuram police inspector Prakash Rao said the refinery's own fire crews brought the flames under control within an hour, while authorities said the thick smoke drifting over nearby neighborhoods was not considered hazardous.
Conflicting accounts of a blast
Revenue Divisional Officer Dileep Chakravarthy told ANI the fire was fully extinguished with the plant's equipment and units from the Andhra Pradesh Fire Department. "There is no cause for worry," he said, adding that an inquiry into industrial safety at the facility would follow.
Accounts differ on how the fire started. Residents and workers reported explosion-like sounds and Chakravarthy described a "small blast," but HPCL sources told The Times of India that a tank explosion was unlikely. Deccan Chronicle reported preliminary indications that an overhead power line may have sparked the fire. HPCL has not said which tank was involved or whether production was disrupted.
American roots, US-licensed technology
The refinery was commissioned in 1957 by Caltex, the venture of Standard Oil of California, today's Chevron, and Texaco. India's government took it over in 1976 and merged it into HPCL two years later. The residue unit where the fire began entered service in January and runs on LC-Max hydrocracking technology licensed by Chevron Lummus Global, which won the contract in 2018. With a capacity of 3.55 million tons a year, it is described as the world's first and largest LC-Max unit.
The incident comes as India, the world's third-largest oil consumer, buys crude at a record pace. Kpler data show the country's imports reached about 5.6 million barrels per day in October, including about 2.3 million from the Middle East and roughly 2 million from Russia. The Visakh plant, rated at 15 million tons a year after a modernization program, ran at 95% of capacity in the July-September quarter, PSU Watch reported, citing HPCL's latest disclosure.
An HPCL source said the extent of the damage would be assessed on Tuesday.
Video: Social media / ConflictTR · Photos: Gulte, PSU Watch
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