Fire kills worker at Kuwait oil refinery
(AFP) 11 August 2008
KUWAIT CITY – A flash fire on Monday in a Kuwait oil refinery killed one worker and injured another before it was brought under control, the state-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Company said.
Production at the 200,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Shuaiba refinery was not affected, the company said. The fire broke out in the early hours of Monday during maintenance operations, it said in a statement carried by the state KUNA news agency.
Firefighters quickly doused the blaze, which caused little damage. An investigation has been launched. Shuaiba, 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the capital, is the smallest of Kuwait’s three refineries, which between them have a production capacity of 920,000 bpd.
Kuwait, OPEC’s fourth largest oil producer, pumps some 2.58 million bpd. The Gulf state announced plans in February to increase its current total output capacity from 2.7 million bpd to four million bpd by 2020.