Singapore's Jurong Aromatics Corporation (JAC) was struck by a fire on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, according to eyewitness accounts, and an employee was hospitalized following the blaze, according to an official source.
A fire broke out at an oil tank in Singapore's Jurong Island at 1500 hrs SGT, on a facility at Tembusu Road, according to the Singapore Civil Defence Force. A video sent by an eyewitness to Genscape showed that a storage tank in a Jurong Aromatics Corporation (JAC) facility was ablaze.
SCDF said that an oil tank fire at 23 Tembusu Road in Singapore was extinguished at 7:45 PM, involving light crude oil that is non-toxic in nature. Firefighters stopped short of mentioning the name of the facility and the company involved.
The location of the blaze is the address of Singapore's JAC; Genscape confirmed and reported late-Wednesday afternoon that a blaze had struck the JAC facility based on an exclusive eye-witness video footage, showing a blazing tank next to another tank clearly labeled "JAC".
Traders in China surveyed told Genscape that the light crude oil in question was likely to be naphtha. JAC's plant is designed to use either condensate or naphtha as a feedstock, but had reconfigured to using naphtha some time ago, based on Genscape data.
"It has been a prolonged five-hour operation involving approximately 150 SCDF personnel battling the raging inferno. SCDF surrounded and contained the fire with a large 6,000 GPM foam monitor and several ground monitors. This operation was a race against time in view of the tank that has buckled, and on the need to prevent the intense fire from spreading to its immediate surroundings," SCDF added.
SCDF explained that the fire broke out at an oil tank in Singapore's Jurong Island at 1,500 hrs SGT.
"A total of five fire engines, three red rhinos, one ambulance, and 29 support vehicles, comprising approximately 150 SCDF personnel were involved in the firefighting operation," said the SCDF.
JAC is able to process 100,000 b/day of condensate. It has a nominal capacity of 800,000 mt/year of paraxylene (PX), 438,000 mt/year of benzene and 200,000 mt/year of orthoxylene (OX). It can also produce 2.5 million mt/year of high-value oil products such as jet fuel, ultra-low sulfur diesel, naphtha, LPG and fuel oil, which are all meant for export, but it has been offline since December 2014, mainly due to unfavorable economics including a plunge in oil prices, and overcapacity issues for aromatics in the region.
The cause of the blaze as well as the damage have not been determined. This fire is unlikely to affect JAC's production, as its plant has been idled for over a year.
"This fire isn't likely to have a big impact (on the market)," according to a source from China's Shaoxing Yuandong polyester.
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