Fire temporarily shutters South Africa’s Enref refinery

Engen Petroleum Ltd. is investigating the cause of a Dec. 4 fire that broke out at its 120,000-b/d Enref refinery at Merebank, in Wentworth, south of Durban, South Africa.

Engen’s emergency response team and local emergency services extinguished the fire—which occurred at 7:10 a.m. local time—by 8:45 a.m., Engen said in a series of posts to its official Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, according to the operator.

In a separate series of posts to its official Twitter account, the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) provincial government said the refinery has been shut down pending the investigation and that Engen management has assured officials there is no risk of secondary fires or fuel shortages as a result of the closure.

Seven people were treated for smoke inhalation following the incident, with all reported to be in stable condition, the KZN government said.

A timeline for when the refinery—South Africa’s second largest—might restart has yet to be disclosed.

According to local media reports and live footage of the incident posted to social media sites by local emergency services in KZN, the refinery fire ensued following a large explosion at the manufacturing site.

Majority owned by Malaysia’s Petronas Group (74%), Engen most recently undertook a temporary controlled shutdown of the Durban refinery in late March amid forecasted lower demand for petroleum products during South Africa’s coronavirus (COVID-19) national lockdown to prevent further viral spread in the region.

The reported explosion and fire at the Durban refinery follows a similar incident on July 2 at Astron Energy (Pty) Ltd.’s 100,000-b/d refinery—South Africa’s third largest—at Milnerton, Cape Town, which resulted in the deaths of two employees (OGJ Online, July 2, 2020).

As of September 2020, Astron Energy said it was close to completing its investigation into the early July fire at the Milnerton refinery, and while plans were in place for safely restarting operations at the site, it remained too early to tell when the refinery would resume operations, according to a Sept. 2, 2020, release from the operator.

To date, the Milnerton refinery also remains offline.