MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indonesia's state oil company PT Pertamina said it has put out a fire that had engulfed part of its 125,000 barrel per day refinery in Balongan, West Java and had begun making preparations to restart the plant, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The fire broke out just after midnight on Monday, forcing Pertamina to shut the plant and evacuate around 950 nearby residents. Six were treated at the hospital due to the fire. Pertamina said in a statement that by Wednesday afternoon, fires in all four affected storage units have been extinguished.
The company was conducting a cooling down process and planning to begin preparation to restart the refinery as soon as it is safe to do so, it said. "Hopefully Balongan refinery can be operational again after a thorough inspection is carried out," Agus Suprijanto, a Pertamina spokesman said in the statement.
Pertamina expected the shut down could be lifted in four to five days as damage was limited to the storage area of the plant and did not affect its oil processing area, company officials said on Monday. The company has said that only 7% of the refinery's 1.35 million kilo litres (KL) of storage capacity was affected, and that the tanks that caught fire had been only holding around 23,000 KL of gasoline.
Pertamina said national fuel stocks remained secure, and any shortage of fuel to Jakarta, which Balongan supplies, could be made up by refineries in Cilacap and Tuban. Pertamina said there were no fatalities, though media reported one resident had died from a heart attack that coud have been caused by the shock of the explosion. West Java police said it will investigate the cause of the fire.
Earlier, Pertamina said it aims to restore operations at its Balongan oil refinery in West Java in 4-5 days, as firefighters worked to extinguish a massive blaze that broke out overnight, injuring six people. Pertamina shut the plant with the capacity of 125,000 barrels per day after the massive fire erupted.
We remind that PT Pertamina shut its cracker in Indonesia for maintenance works from 18 March, 2020. This cracker with a production capacity of 578,000 tons remained off-stream until 18 April 2020.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 241,030 tonnes in January 2021 versus 217,890 tonnes a year earlier. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
Pertamina is an Indonesian state-owned oil and natural gas corporation based in Jakarta. It was created in August 1968 by the merger of Pertamin (established 1961) and Permina (established 1957). Pertamina is the world's largest producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
MRC