Pertamina Fighting Fire at Central Java Refinery

Pertamina, Indonesia’s state oil and gas company, is fighting a fire in a storage tank for a component of high-octane gasoline at its refinery in Cilacap, Central Java today, the company said.

The fire on Tank 31 T-2, which has a capacity of 10,487 kiloliters of high octane mogas component, didn’t cause any disruption to fuel production, Pertamina said in an e-mailed statement.

Police later said a second tank caught fire and has been been destroyed two at Indonesia's largest oil refinery.Local police chief Lt. Col. Rudy Darmoko said no injuries have been reported in the fire.Several explosions occurred at the storage tanks after the blaze broke out early Saturday.Darmoko said the cause of fire is still being investigated but there are no signs of sabotage. Residents were evacuated from around the Cilacap refinery on Java island.Pertamina spokesman Muhammad Harun says the fire will not disrupt fuel production.Another fire in 2008 at the Cilacap refinery killed three people.The Cilacap refinery has four tanks with a combined capacity of 61,300 kiloliters. The fire started at 4:55 a.m., the statement said.

Pertamina is investigating the cause of the incident and potential losses as a result of the damage, the company said.

(x the JG)

Ps'je.
Has this bro Bobby lit an illigal fire again to bakar his sateh? This guy will never learn!

April 03, 2011

Cilacap, Central Java. With a fire at its largest refinery spreading, Pertamina has asked for additional tons of foam and more firefighters to battle the blaze as it entered a second day.

"We have prepared 40 tons of foam and five tons of it will soon be sent from Jakarta. I hope it will be enough," the state-owned energy company`s corporate secretary Hari Karyuliarto told reporters late Saturday.

He said the foam would be dissolved in water around the location of the fire in Refinery Unit IV in Cilacap. He said reinforcements would bring the total of firefighters battling the fire to 71.

He admitted that another tank close to Tank 31 T-02 had also been burned due to strong winds, bringing the total to two.

"The burned tank is Tank 31-T03. The other two meanwhile have already been filled with foam," he said.

In a statement late Saturday, however, Pertamina said a third tank, 31-T7, had begun burning.

The company said national fuel stocks are not affected by the blaze. Under normal circumstances, Cilacap supplies fuel to Yogyakarta and Bandung via a pipeline. Pertamina said it has prepared a backup plan using a tanker ship to carry fuel to the main terminal supplying Yogyakarta and Bandung.

Hari would not speculate about losses from the blaze, saying the company was concentrating on putting it out.

He said the villages around the refinery were safe and he called on the people to remain calm and follow police instructions.

"We will try to extinguish the fire as quickly as possible. The faster the better," he said.

Central Java police chief Inspector General Edward Aritonang said police had already prepared access for vehicles carrying additional foam so that they could reach the location quickly.

He said the police did not know what caused the fire.

"We will send a forensic team to investigate it," he said.

The fire at Tank 31-T02 began at 4.55 a.m. Saturday.

Antara

....Has this bro Bobby lit an illigal fire again to bakar his sateh? This guy will never learn!....

En dan hoe toch? Als de arang op is moet er toch op één of andere manier gebakar kunnen worden. Alleen jammer de smaak wordt sterk beinvloed door de Minyak Tanah op zo'n manier.

A fire reignited at PT Pertamina’s Cilacap, Central Java refinery after the four-day blaze in three storage tanks had been extinguished earlier today, Pertamina Corporate Secretary Hari Karyuliarto said.

The fire at Tank 31 T-7, the last of three tanks that was burning, was extinguished at 10.35 a.m. local time, Jakarta- based Pertamina said in an e-mailed statement this morning. Before the incident, the tank was used to store naphtha. The company extinguished the blaze at two other tanks on April 3.

“It’s burning again,” Karyuliarto said by phone. “Probably because there is still fuel in the tank. We expect to extinguish the fire today.”

Pertamina shut fuel oil complex-1 at the Cilacap refinery after the fire, which started at a storage tank for a gasoline component at 4:55 a.m. local time on April 2, spread to two other tanks. Before the shutdown, the refinery had a daily total capacity of 348,000 barrels of oil, Karyuliarto said April 2.

Pertamina started using a “terminator canon” earlier this morning, spraying up to 3,500 gallon of foam a minute, to help put out the fire at the Tank 31 T-7, today’s statement said. It was the second incident at the refinery after a blast on January 2010 led to the shutdown of part of the plant.

Pertamina said yesterday it has adequate fuel inventories to supply the provinces of West and Central Java even after the the closure, including preparing 400,000 barrels of imported gasoline as back-up. It has supplied 7,300 kiloliters of kerosene, 13,000 kiloliters of low-octane gasoline and 28,000 kiloliters of diesel to five fuel depots on the most-populated island in Indonesia, the company said.

(x the JG)