Fires erupt in refinery, oil field in Iran

Three fires have broken out in refineries and an oil field in Iran in the past week. The blazes were at Abadan refinery in southwest Iran in Ahvaz, a refinery in Tehran and in an oil field, southwest of the country, Iranian media outlets reported.

According to the official Iranian news agency (IRNA), firefighters managed to put the fire which erupted in the distillation unit at the refinery.

A public relations official at the Abadan refinery said the fire caused power problems in the refinery.

“The fire affected the power network in the refinery and this led to problems in distillation and affected some pumps,” the official was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

Fars added that this is the third fire to erupt at the Abadan refinery in the past few years. They added it was probably due to a defect in the electrical system.

In addition to the fire at the Abadan refinery, fire also erupted in the past two days in oil and gas facilities in Tehran. One fire erupted in a refinery in Tehran and another in a gas field in Kaj Sran in southwest of Iran.

The worst fire happened on Sunday morning in an oil storage tank at an oil refinery in south Tehran.

According to the Iranian news agency, Hassan Bagherian, an official at the Iranian oil company, said the fire at the Tehran refinery erupted due to a lightning strike.

Bagherian also said that the tank's capacity was two million barrels but when the fire erupted it contained 400,000 liters of crude oil which completely evaporated as a result of the fire. No one was hurt in the blaze.

During the past few months, there has been several fires in oil, gas and petrochemical facilities in Iran, particularly in the Ahvaz oil field.

In August, Gholam Reza Jalali, the director of the civil defense unit, said Iran “discovered an electronic virus in two of its petrochemical facilities” after investigating the possibility that electronic attacks are behind recent fires there.