Syria oil refinery fire doused after leakage
DAMASCUS: Firefighters extinguished a blaze on Sunday in a distillation unit at one of Syria’s two oil refineries, Syrian state TV reported.
No one was hurt, but the fire caused some damage to the facility, a refinery official said.
The TV named the cause of the fire as crude oil leakage from one of the pumping stations at the Homs Oil Refinery in the central province of Homs.
The fire came amid a series of mysterious atacks on vessels and oil facilities in Syria over the past months. The war-torn country has been suffering from fuel shortage in recent months.
Head of Homs Oil Refinery Suleiman Mohammed told state TV that the distillation unit that caught fire is one of four at the refinery.
In addition to the refinery in Homs, Syria has another one near the coastal town of Banias. Both are government-run and operating.
Syria’s oil resources are mostly outside of government controlled areas.
Syria controls some small oil and gas fields in the country’s centre but most of the country’s large fields in the east are controlled by USbacked Kurdish-led fighters.
This has made Damascus reliant on Iran for fuel. The US Treasury sanctions have targeted a network that spanned Syria, Iran and Russia responsible for shipping oil to the Syrian government.
In late April, Syria’s oil ministry said a fire erupted in an oil tanker on its coast ater what it said was a suspected drone atack.
In January, an explosion in an oil tanker outside a state fuel distribution company in Homs caused massive fire. The minister of oil told Syrian state TV at the time that seven tankers caught fire but there were no civilian casualties.
State television showed live footage of fire engulfing parts of the refinery with black smoke plumes in the distance as firefighters tackled the flames.
There was a large fire and blast at Homs in January this year involving a nearby crude oil loading station and dozens of trucks that transport petroleum products across the country.
Both Homs refinery and Banias on the Mediterranean coast have faced supply shortages in recent months due to erratic supplies of Iranian crude oil to the sanctions-hit country that relies mainly on Tehran for its energy needs.
Syria has over the past year two years faced months of gasoline and fuel shortages, forcing it to ration supplies distributed across government-held areas and to apply several rounds of steep price hikes.