Columns of fire engulfed a crucial Australian oil refinery after a chain of explosions, authorities said Thursday, as they warned of disruptions to domestic fuel supply.<\/p>\n
Flames as high as 60 metres (200 feet) erupted late Wednesday after a gas leak ignited at the Viva fuel plant in Victoria state, firefighters said, one of only two working oil refineries in Australia.<\/p>\n
The refinery, about an hour’s drive southwest of state capital Melbourne, pumps out about 10 percent of Australia’s fuel, according to energy company Viva.<\/p>\n
Fire Rescue Victoria said Thursday the blaze had been contained, although it could smoulder throughout the day.<\/p>\n
“The whole sky was lit up with the bright flame,” Geelong resident Wayne Gardiner told AFP.<\/p>\n
The refinery is capable of processing up to 120,000 barrels of oil each day, company figures stated.<\/p>\n
Analysts said that, together with the Ampol refinery in Brisbane, it produces about 10-20 percent of Australia’s total fuel supply.<\/p>\n
“This is not a positive development,” Energy Minister Chris Bowen said as the nation’s fuel supplies are under pressure due to war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Bowen said he had spoken to Viva and the firm was “very confident they can replace the petrol with imports”.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, currently visiting Malaysia, said Australia had secured an additional supply of some 100 million litres of diesel from Brunei and South Korea.<\/p>\n
“This is the first of many expected shipments secured, under the government’s new strategic reserve powers,” he told a news conference.<\/p>\n
The fire ripped through a section of the refinery responsible for the production of high-octane petrol, Bowen earlier said.<\/p>\n
By triggering isolation valves, other parts of the plant producing jet fuel and diesel had been spared the worst of the blaze.<\/p>\n
Geographically isolated and with only two oil refineries, Australia is heavily exposed to disruptions in global fuel supply and imports most of its petrol.<\/p>\n
Canberra urged Australians to ignore the impulse to rush out and panic buy more fuel.<\/p>\n
“It’s important that people buy as much fuel as they need. But no more, no less,” Bowen said.<\/p>\n
– ‘Ferocious’ –<\/p>\n
Incident controller Mark McGuinness said a “significant leak” of highly flammable gases and liquid hydrocarbons had triggered the inferno.<\/p>\n
“It was quite ferocious. It went from a small fire through several explosions to a large, intense fire,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Images taken Thursday morning showed thick clouds of smoke billowing over the industrial complex.<\/p>\n
Viva Energy boss Scott Wyatt said it was a “very challenging incident”.<\/p>\n
“Production is not our primary priority today,” he told reporters. “Today it is getting the site safe.”<\/p>\n
Australia holds roughly 38 days’ worth of petrol in reserve, according to government figures, far below the 90-day minimum dictated by the International Energy Agency.<\/p>\n
While the government has so far resisted moves to ration fuel, it has urged drivers to conserve petrol where they can and to favour public transport if possible.<\/p>\n
Like most nations in Asia and the South Pacific, Australia is heavily reliant on oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which at one point carried one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas.<\/p>\n
Shipping traffic through the vital waterway has essentially ceased since the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28.<\/p>\n
sft-oho\/fox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Columns of fire engulfed a crucial Australian oil refinery after a chain of explosions, authorities said Thursday, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[972,90150,163808,187622,42,43,187621,40,38,41,39,187623],"class_list":{"0":"post-394882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-chris-bowen","10":"tag-fuel-supplies","11":"tag-fuel-supply","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-oil-refinery","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories","19":"tag-victoria-state"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}