Explosion in Digboi Refinery days ahead of Indian Oil chairman’s visit

DIGBOI: A powerful explosion at the SDU plant- one of the vital plants of the century-old Digboi AOD refinery- occurred here on the wee hours of Thursday, just days before of the visit of the chairman of Indian Oil, Shrikant Madhav Vaidya.

According to reports received from the refinery on-duty employees, following a mammoth explosion at 12.40 am on Thursday, a huge fire immediately engulfed the hazardous sulphuric plant, commonly known as SDU, inside the refinery. However, no casualties were reported in the incident, the sound of which had shaken the entire Digboi township.

The century-old Digboi refinery is located in the heart of the Digboi township with a population of around 21,736. Meanwhile, the sources at the AOD said that the Digboi refinery - one of Asia’s oldest oil establishments –was undergoing maintenance work since August 2. “While the overhauling work of the SDU plant was being carried out maintaining all safety protocol on Thursday evening, there followed an explosion resulting in fire in the plant. The fire tenders which were on a ‘stand-by’ mode during the maintenance work, could easily douse the fire without any loss whatsoever,” said a source.

Terming the incident as ‘possible outcome of minor maintenance related technical error during the refinery shutdown period’, an official at the AOD Corporate Communication admitted that the plant-wise maintenance of the refinery –a periodic mandatory work was almost on the verge of completion while the incident occurred during the start-up of the SDU plant. “The fire, which was not impactful at all, was immediately contained,” added a Corporate Communication official.

Earlier in May 2009, Digboi had a narrow escape after a major fire had broken out at a coker unit of the refinery which was allegedly due to poor maintenance of the pipelines wherein a fire service official and a contractual worker had to lose their lives in the ablaze. The official visit of Vaidya, the top boss of the Indian Oil on Saturday to inspect Digboi Refinery bears significance in the wake of the unpleasant occurrence in one of the industries.

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