A PetroChina refinery in the north-east Chinese city of Dalian has shut down a unit that processes 8 million tonnes of crude per year after a fire broke out on Saturday afternoon, an industry source said. "The fire has been stopped. Checks are being made on the unit to look into the cause," the source said. It was not clear when the unit would be restarted.
PetroChina's Dalian refinery has a total crude refining capacity of around 20 million tonnes per year. The official Xinhua news agency said earlier on Saturday that a refining unit in a city in north-eastern China had caught fire, but it did not give details.
The fire is the latest in a string of accidents in the Chinese oil industry over the past few weeks. China National Offshore Oil Company's Huizhou refinery shut its 800,000 tonne-per-year aromatics unit after a fire broke out early on Monday morning, two industry sources told Reuters. An oil leak hit China's largest offshore oil field last month, which the government's oceanic administration said was the fault of operator ConocoPhillips.