MOSCOW (MRC) -- A blast at Romania's biggest crude oil refinery killed one person and injured five others, authorities and the company which runs the Petromidia plant on the Black Sea said, as per Reuters.
Video footage from a nearby beach in the coastal resort of Mamaia showed black smoke rising from the area next to the refinery and some tourists reported hearing a loud bang. Rompetrol Rafinare, part of KMG International Group, said the explosion was inside the diesel oil refining installation, and that processes had been halted safely.
"Five of our colleagues are in medical care at Constanta County Hospital, and we are sorry to inform you that a person has been identified as deceased," it added in a statement.
Rompetrol declined to comment on the likely financial damage but said the fire had been "isolated and stabilised".
Raed Arafat, head of the Department for Emergency Situations said the danger of further blasts was diminished dramatically as firefighters have been putting out the fire.
Petromidia is based on the shores of the Black Sea in Navodari, 20 km (12.5 miles) north of the country's biggest port, Constanta. It said it processed a total of 1.26 million tonnes of raw materials in the first quarter of this year, a similar level to a year before, and had been running at 84% capacity. Rompetrol was trading 1.96% down at 0.05 lei by 1225 GMT.
As MRC informed earlier, the petrochemical activities of Romanian Rompetrol Group have been integrated in the refinery arm since November, 2013, in a move designed to cut costs and increase the overall efficiency of the group’s operations. "The integration of the two companies represents the continuation of Rompetrol Group’s strategy to concentrate the production activity in a single activity", said then Rompetrol in a statement.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
Rompetrol, the only producer of PP and PE in Romania, is majority owned by Kazakhstan’s KMG International Group with a 54.63% shareholding, with the Romanian government owning the remaining 44.7%.
MRC