Fire rocks PetroChina refinery in Dalian

August 18, 2017 08:57

PetroChina has suffered another fire accident at its key oil refinery in Dalian. Photo: Bloomberg

A fire broke out on Thursday at a major PetroChina refinery in Dalian, the latest industrial accident to rock the northeastern Chinese port city.

The inferno in the plant's 1.4 million-tons-per-year residue catalytic cracker started around 6:40 pm local time, Reuters reports, citing Chinese state media.

The refinery, which is owned by a PetroChina subsidiary, has three crude distillation units with total processing capacity of 410,000 barrels per day of crude oil.

Firefighters battled huge flames and billowing smoke, pictures on the People's Daily twitter account showed, before bringing the blaze under control within two hours.

No casualties have been reported so far, according to Xinhua news agency.

Local government officials were at the site Thursday evening as an investigation began into the cause of the inferno.

The plant's crude processing operations were not affected, although there may be a small reduction in output at the gas separation unit as a result of the incident, a refinery source told Reuters.

In 2013, an explosion at the refinery left two people injured and two missing.

Dalian was also the site of one of China's biggest known oil spills, when a pipeline blast put at least hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the sea in July 2010.

-- Contact us at [email protected]

Hong Kong

The COVID-19 new normal: Education sector needs to be prepared Lau Kin-yu

Since physical classes were suspended after the Lunar New Year holiday, the Secretary for Education have announced the latest arrangements for class commencement. All on-campus activities and face-to-

What’s wrong with HK’s “partial lockdown” strategy? Justin Lau

During the first wave of COVID-19 global outbreak, Hong Kong clearly excelled most of its competitive rivals, including Singapore, in controlling the epidemic. As one of the more successful textbook

A deer is a horse in Orwellian Hong Kong Michael Chugani

Living in today’s Hong Kong requires wearing Orwellian glasses. These glasses help you see things as they are not. That’s exactly what our increasingly authoritarian government wants. When you see a

Crazy ride, Jimmy Lai! Ben Kwok

Call it a retaliatory rally. Otherwise, how can one explain Next Digital’s 11 times surge in two days after owner and founder Jimmy Lai was arrested? The embattled media company almost dropped dead

Reforming education in the post-COVID-19 era Lau Kin-yu

It’s been more than six months since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Hong Kong. Prof. Yuen Kwok-yung, chair of infectious diseases, faculty of medicine, HKU, has noted publicly that the