One worker was killed early Saturday morning after a fire broke out at a Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co plant, according to the firm.
A video uploaded on Twitter by the state-owned Shanghai Daily showed a raging fire devouring a section of a huge facility, billowing thick black smoke in columns.
The incident at one of China’s largest refining and petrochemicals companies occurred at 4 a.m. and was brought under control within five hours, according to Xinhua, but “was difficult to handle.”
It was thought that it would keep burning for a while.
According to a Sinopec spokesman at the Shanghai plant, the driver of a third-party delivery vehicle died and a corporate employee sustained a minor injury.
He claimed the ethylene glycol facility at the company in Jinshan, a southern suburb of China’s financial capital, was damaged by the fire.
On its official Weibo account, state-owned Sinopec said it was monitoring volatile organic chemicals and their impact on rainfall outflows, and that no impact on the surrounding aquatic environment had been discovered.
According to its website, Sinopec Shanghai has a processing capacity of 16 million tonnes of crude oil and 700,000 tonnes of ethylene per year.
It is investing US$520 million in a carbon fibre project as part of its diversification strategy away from refining and toward resin and fibers.
Image Credit: CNS via Reuters
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