A fire broke out at India’s Haldia Petrochemical plant

A fire broke out at one of the naphtha pipelines belong to Haldia Petrochemical in West Bengal, India on Tuesday, 3 August 2021, which took several hours to bring under control. 

The petrochemical complex was carrying out maintenance work when the incident took place. A senior official from Haldia was quoted as “Naphtha is highly combustible and a little spark might cause a fire. Generally, we clear the entire tank before any kind of repair work, but there is a possibility that some residual chemical was lying in the pipeline which caused the fire,"

In September 2019, a similar incident occurred at the naphtha cracker that injured 15 people at the site. 

The 700,000 tons/year naphtha cracker was shut on 1 August for routine maintenance. The unit was initially scheduled to restart in the first week of September 2021. However, the fire might force the company to take longer to come back, though confirmation from Haldia at the time of this report.

The company also shut downstream units including 340,000 tons/year PP line, 250,000 tons/year standalone HDPE line, and a 240,000 tons/year HDPE/LLDPE swing line.