Blazes in Iran’s Petchem Plants Caused by Lack of Funding for HSE: Zanganeh

“Regarding HSE issues, the Oil Ministry has done what it had to do,” Zanganeh said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“Not only during and after the incidents but also since the current administration took office (in 2013), some instructions (on HSE) have been sent to all production and process units of the country’s oil industry, including petrochemical units,” he noted.

He further emphasized that lack of funding for the HSE sector and the negligence of some private companies are behind the incidents, adding, nonetheless, that probes are still underway to determine the exact cause of each of the incidents.

The spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s Energy Commission had said earlier that Zanganeh will participate in a meeting of the commission to explain about the causes of the recent blazes.

On Friday, a storage tank in the Bistoon Petrochemical Complex in Iran’s western province of Kermanshah caught fire but the fire was extinguished on the same day and left no casualties.

Preliminary indications suggested that a fault in the electrical system may have caused the incident.

It came less than three weeks after the most serious incident in the history of Iran’s petrochemical industry, when an inferno broke out at Bu Ali Sina Petrochemical Refinery Complex in Mahshahr and raged at a giant storage tank for more than two days.