Fire doused at Numaligarh Refinery, incurs loss

A major fire broke out in the hydro-cracker unit of Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) yesterday evening, with the loss estimated to be in crores.

Soon after the fire broke out, NRL declared ‘onsite disaster’ at around 6:40 pm.

However, though United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) had claimed responsibility of having its hand behind yesterday’s incident, NRL has ruled out any such involvement.

A company representative, posted at the refinery, rubbished Ulfa’s claim of using a ‘Magnetic Time Device’ to trigger the fire. “Had Ulfa used a Magnetic Time Device, the whole refinery would have been engulfed by fire,” he added.

He said the fire was due to a “technical fault” and more precisely, might have had occurred due to “leakage of hydrogen”.

He also denied any explosion preceding the fire. “There were sounds of explosion, but those were of fire balls of gas and not of any explosive device,” he said.

He said prima facie the loss due to the fire appeared to be in crores, though a final assessment would be done shortly.

Fire service from NRL immediately rushed to the incident site and started fighting fire with water and foam. Cooling with water was done for the nearby reactors, other equipment and structures. Representatives from district administration too arrived at the site and provided necessary assistance.

Though the fire was brought under control by 9 pm, fire fighting continued till early hours of Sunday. Support from other oil industries of the region including Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Guwahati Refinery, Digboi Refinery, ONGC, Oil India Ltd (OIL) was sought under mutual aid scheme by NRL to fight the fire.

The company representative said due to prompt fire fighting there was no spread of fire to the nearby units and fire could be contained within the hydro-cracker unit. There had been no injury to persons engaged in refinery operation during the fire as well as during the fire fighting exercise.

A high level committee has been constituted to enquire into the incident, the report of which will be out shortly.

NRL, which is located in Golaghat district of Assam, is a subsidiary of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and had been an award winning refinery in past for adhering to high safety standards.