Monday, May 07, 2012 -
An oil refinery explosion in southern Tajikistan killed two workers and seriously injured another two, media outlets reported on Monday.
The internal affairs ministry confirmed the deaths of the two people whose identities have not yet been released in the blast at an oil processing plant in Khatlon province.
Administration officials of Kumsangir district, where the facility is located, attributed the incident to excessively hot oil.
"The prolonged boiling of fuel oil produces explosive vapors,” noted Kumsangir administration head Kholmurodov Rakhmonov.
“There are suggestions that the workers simply forgot to turn off the heating of the tank with fuel oil, and as a result, it exploded,” the Avesta.tj news agency reported him as saying.
Firefighters were able to quickly locate the source of the fire and prevent it from spreading to nearby oil tanks and thereby preventing further explosions, the interior ministry said.