Reliance's fire-affected unit restarted

Friday, 27 October 2006, 19:30 IST
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Mumbai: Two days after a major fire, the diesel hydro-treating unit-II at the Jamnagar refinery of Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries has been restarted, a company officials said on Friday. The operations of this unit had been temporarily shutdown in the wake of a fire in which one contract employee died and another staff member was severely injured. The fire broke out at the unit at around 11 a.m. Wednesday and was contained in two hours. A faulty valve at the unit - one of the 40 facilities at the plant - was stated as the reason for the fire. "The diesel hydro-treating unit-II at Jamnagar Refinery has been restarted and the same is operating at full throughout. This unit was temporarily shutdown on Wednesday," the official statement said. Reliance has clarified that there has been no shutdown in operations at the 33 million tonnes-capacity Jamnagar Refinery, located 300 km south of Gujarat's commercial capital Ahmedabad, as a consequence of the fire. "The RIL refinery has not been shutdown. There is no need for a shutdown. The LPG production at the RIL's Refinery complex continues to be normal at an average production rate of over 7,000 tonnes per day," the company statement said Friday. "All sales and other commitments of the RIL Refinery are being adhered to," it added. The company has clarified that the refinery has enough flexibility built into its configuration to allow normal operations as per its usual heavy and sour crude slate and premium-grade product mix. The restoration work at the location of the fire is, meanwhile, going on in full swing. Even though Reliance has given an assurance that there would be no shortfall in supplies of cooking gas, the government has approached Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for additional supplies. Reliance has set up two expert panels to probe the cause of the fire and advise on how to assess the damage and prevent such an accident.
Source: IANS