The 12 destructive events have been widely scattered at 10 locations around the country and do not appear to involve sabotage, although there has been speculation about sabotage, especially since all but one of them have happened close to Iran’s borders. (For locations, see map below.)
In the latest batch of problems, a fire engulfed several oil tanks on the island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf last Wednesday. Heydar Yarveisi, head of the Iranian Offshore Oil Co., said the blaze was caused by a lightning strike on an oil tank in a tank farm. He did not explain why lightning rods failed to protect the tanks from a strike. He said there were no injuries. Firefighters eventually extinguished the blaze. The number of tanks engulfed in the fire was not revealed.
Two days later, one workman was killed and 11 others injured in a fire inside the Bandar Imam Petrochemical complex near the Persian Gulf coast in Khuzestan province. The Mehr news agency said the fire erupted in the natural gas liquids fractionation unit, which is under construction.
The third incident involved the rupture of a huge 48-inch diameter crude oil pipeline near the city of Daylam on the Persian Gulf coast in Bushehr province. Some reports said there was an explosion in the pipeline; others simply described the pipe as corroded.
The Oil Ministry said nothing about the incident until Sunday. It has still not said when the pipe ruptured or how long oil poured out of it before anyone knew what had happened and stopped the flow. But Mo-hammad Baqeri, an official of the Environmental Protection Organization, told the Iranian Labor News Agency the oil had leaked for 10 to 15 hours, an astoundingly long time.
Word that the incident was serious came from Amir Sediqi, head of the Environmental Protection Department in the province, who said an oil slick stretches 20 kilometers (12 miles) along the coastline and 8 kilometers (5 miles) out to sea.
What’s more, Baqeri said the rupture occurred inland and the oil was washed into the sea by a rainstorm so that 400 hectares (1.5 square miles) of farmland have been ruined as well.
Behruz Atabakzadeh, dep-uty director of the Environmental Protection organization, said some of the damage caused by the spill was “irreversible,” although he did not say what kind of damage that was.
He and other officials estimated it would take two months to clean up after the spill. But it wasn’t clear how they could provide such an estimate when they acknowledge they do not know how much crude spilled.
Before the latest trio of events in the last week, the last previous disruption happened January 14 in a warehouse on Kharg Island and set off a fire. One man was said to have been injured in what the authorities called a “gas explosion.” Kharg Island lies in the Persian Gulf and is Iran’s principal crude oil export terminal.
Before that, there was an explosion November 28 at the Tamarchin border checkpoint hear Piranshahr in West Azerbaijan province. Nine tanker trucks that were being cleared through the border post caught fire. Three Iraqi drivers were killed. The governor of Piranshahr blamed the incident on the Iraqi drivers for leaving their trucks unattended and failing to observe safety and traffic rules. It wasn’t explained now the drivers were killed in the explosion if they had left their vehicles unattended.
An explosion erupted 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 did not say how much the explosion set back the gasoline expansion, a major national goal to stave off gasoline imports. But the expanded refinery was inaugurated earlier this week.
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. The Arak explosion is the only one that has erupted far from Iran’s borders.
Before that, the next previous oil industry explosion occurred October 21 on the deck of an oil pipe storehouse in Khorramshahr. An announcement 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 dug 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.
The 12 disruptions in eight months have been widely scattered physically and have involved gas, oil and petrochemicals. There has been some speculation of sabotage by foreign powers given that all but one have been near Iran’s borders. But the government has not alleged any sabotage.
Most believe lax safety standards and inadequate maintenance are the chief causes of the accidents, though 12 in eight months is far above the norm.
The map below shows the locales.
Two days before the Mashhad 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 and 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. Provincial officials said the explosion was caused by high pressure in the boiler of the petrochemical factory on the island.
Before that, Iranian fire-fighters needed nearly 40 days—an inordinate length of time by international standards—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.