JAKARTA: Indonesia's state oil company 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.
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.
Pertamina expected the shutdown 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 7 per cent of the refinery's 1.35 million kilo litres of storage capacity was affected, and that the tanks that caught fire had been 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 could have been caused by the shock of the explosion.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
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