sion in five months, this one in part of Iran’s politically-sensitive gasoline expansion program.
The seven blasts have been widely scattered around the country and do not appear to involve sabotage, although there is much speculation about sabotage.
The latest explosion erupted last Monday, November 1, as workmen were checking out a tank in the new gasoline production unit being built at the Arak refinery. No one was killed, state television said. Officials put the damage at 5 million rials ($500,000). But they did not say how much the explosion would set back the gasoline expansion, a major national goal to stave off gasoline imports.
No explanation of the explosion was given, but since it occurred during an air test on the tank, the tank was presumably defective in some way.
Arak currently produces 4 million of the 66 million liters of gasoline Iran uses daily. When the project where the explosion occurred is finished, it is due to produce 16 million liters a day. That addition of 12 million liters would address more than half of the 22 million liters Iran has normally imported.
Iran says it has obviated the need for any gasoline imports right now by converting several petrochemical plants to gasoline production. But that means petrochemical output is down.
The last previous oil industry explosion occurred October 21 on the deck of an oil pipe storehouse in Khorramshahr, an announcement said. It said one man was killed and two others injured. It blamed the blast on some ammunition that had been stored at the site during the 1980-88 war and never removed. No one has said why the ammunition was not removed in 22 years.
The explosion before that was August 6 near Mashhad as a workman trying to lay a new gas pipeline smashed into an existing gas pipeline with his bulldozer and set off an immense blast with a ball of fire that engulfed an area 600 meters, or more than a third of a mile, across. There were conflicting reports on deaths and injuries, but at least four workmen died that day. Some reports said the death toll later reached 10 because of serious injuries.
Twelve men were killed in the four previous explosions of recent months.
The seven explosions in five months have been widely scattered physically and have involved gas, oil and petrochemicals. There has been some speculation of sabotage by foreign powers because the first six were near Iran’s borders. But the government has not alleged any sabotage, and the most recent explosion was in the middle of the country.
Most believe lax safety standards and inadequate maintenance are the chief causes of the series of explosions, though seven in five months is far above the norm.
The map below at lft shows the seven locales.
Two days before the Mash-had pipeline explosion, five men were killed when a blast erupted from a gas leak while workmen were welding an ethane pipeline at the Pardis petrochemical plant in Assaluyeh port on the Persian Gulf coast. The plant had been inaugurated days earlier by President Ahmadi-nejad.
One day before that explosion, the governor of Talesh in Gilan province on the Caspian coast, Khalid Behruzifar, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) a gas pipeline explosion there had caused minor damage to nearby farms, but there were no casualties. Thirty-two meters of the main pipeline, which carries gas to the western provinces, were destroyed, he said.
Two weeks before that, four people were killed in an explosion and fire on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s largest oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf. Provincial officials said the explosion was caused by high pressure in the boiler of a petrochemical factory.
Before that, Iranian fire-fighters needed nearly 40 days to extinguish a blowout and fire at an oil well in the western province of Kermanshah. The explosion May 29 killed three workers, injured a dozen more, and sent balls of flame into the air. At its worst, the fire was consuming 8,000 barrels of oil a day.