Explosion, fire hit Pertamina’s Balongan refinery

Indonesia’s state-owned PT Pertamina is investigating the cause of a Mar. 29 explosion and ensuing fire in the storage tank area of subsidiary PT Kilang Pertamina Internasional’s 125,000-b/sd refinery—known as Refinery Unit VI—in Balongan, Indramayu District, West Java.

The fire, which broke out on Mar. 29 at 12:45 a.m. local time in the T-301 storage tank, was quickly isolated to the refinery’s fuel storage tank area and did not impact main processing units at the site, Pertamina said on Mar. 30.

The operator, which began a controlled shutdown of processing units to prevent the fire’s spread, said it will resume operations at the refinery once the fire is fully extinguished and conditions are deemed safe.

In the meantime, Pertamina assured the market plans were already in place to ensure the incident will not disrupt fuel availability in the region, as replacement supplies have been secured from its 348,000-b/sd Cilacap refinery in Central Java and subsidiary PT Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Indotoma’s (TPPI) small Tuban refining and petrochemical complex in East Java Province.

While Pertamina and local emergency crews were able to contain the primary flashpoint and hotspot to T-301 on Mar. 29, efforts were still ongoing to completely extinguish the fire, which impacted a total of four tanks in the 2-hectare storage tank area of the refinery’s 180-hectare site, according to a series of Mar. 29-30 releases from the operator.

A cause of the blast—which resulted in injuries to and hospitalization of 5-6 local passersby as well as evacuation and relocation of surrounding residents—has yet to be determined and remains under investigation by the company and local authorities, Pertamina said.

Most recently, Pertamina said it was on track to commission the Balongan refinery’s leg of the operator’s broader Refining Development Master Plan (RDMP) project in 2023 (OGJ Online, Jan. 24, 2020).