JAKARTA – A thick plume of black smoke rose into the sky as a massive fire at one of Indonesia’s biggest oil refineries raged for a second day today, as efforts continued to extinguish a blaze that has left six people severely injured.
Four oil storage tanks are in flames at the Balongan refinery in West Java, owned by state oil company Pertamina, after an explosion yesterday morning.
“The tanks are now in water isolation so the blaze will not spread to other tanks,” said National Police’s spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan during a briefing today.
About 1,000 locals have been evacuated from the area.
The cause of the fire is not yet clear, but the company said the blaze broke out during a lightning storm.
The local disaster agency said one person had died from a heart attack after the explosion.
Six severely wounded people have been hospitalised in the capital here, about 200km from the sprawling plant, which opened in the mid-1990s and can refine some 125,000 barrels of oil a day.
At least 30 others sustained minor injuries.
Pertamina has insisted the fire is not likely to cause fuel supply disruptions due to a high volume of stock. – AFP, March 30, 2021
