A fire that broke out on Thursday at state oil major PetroChina's <601857.
A fire that broke out on Thursday at state oil major PetroChina's <601857.SS> plant in northeastern China, one of the country's largest refineries, has been brought under control with no reported casualties so far, state media reported.
More than 600 firefighters extinguished the blaze at the plant's 1.4 million-tonnes-per-annum catalytic cracker just after 9:00 p.m. (1300 GMT), and stayed on the scene to make sure equipment at the refinery remained cool, state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday.
The inferno, the latest industrial incident to rock the port city of Dalian, started at around 6:40 p.m. due to a broken seal in a feed pump, CCTV said.
The refinery in Liaoning province and owned by PetroChina Dalian Petrochemical Corp, has three crude distillation units with total processing capacity of 410,000 barrels per day of crude oil. Catalytic crackers typically produce gasoline.
Firefighters battled huge flames and billowing smoke, pictures on the People's Daily twitter account showed.
Local government officials were at the site on Thursday evening as an investigation began into the cause of the inferno, state radio reported on its social media blog.
Environmental inspectors are carrying out checks but said containment pools installed at the refinery had prevented pollutants from entering coastal waters. Nearby air quality monitoring stations showed no signs of abnormal emissions in the area, CCTV reported.
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 said.
PetroChina was not available to comment.
In 2013, an explosion at the refinery left two people injured and two missing. [http://bit.ly/2v4vloW]
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. [http://bit.ly/2uTYTGq]
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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