Explosion At Port Of Rotterdam’s Refinery & Fuel Terminal Kills 1 & Injures Several Others

An explosion at Port of Rotterdam’s petroleum products storage facility has led to the death of one worker and left 6 seriously injured, per local authorities.

According to the Police, the blast at Europe’s biggest port occurred on Thursday morning, and a crime scene was set up to establish what led to the disaster.

Police have ruled out signs of any sabotage, calling it a workplace accident as the investigation has just begun. Rotterdam police spokesperson Daan Valkenburg, however, said that they were keeping all possibilities open.

Gunvor Energy said that the blast occurred during maintenance work at its refinery and fuel terminal, located in the industrial section of the facility.

According to port officials, a maintenance team had been working on a section of pipes at the terminal when the incident happened.

There was also a power failure reported in another part of the Rotterdam Port, reported by the emergency services department, which elaborated that a transformer was on fire for to unknown reason.

Many oil and gas companies had to immediately stop their operations and evacuate all port workers and other personnel from that part of the port.

However, by afternoon, the issue was resolved, the fire was extinguished, and power was restored.

Emergency services later said that there was no connection between the blackout at the place where several oil and gas companies are based and the explosion.

The Port of Rotterdam is one of the main hubs for crude oil, fuel import and storage. It also houses the largest refinery in the continent, which is operated by Shell.

Gunvor has stated that it is working with local authorities, while Shell and the Port Administration confirmed that neither their operations nor the LNG Terminals suffered from any impact.

ExxonMobil said that after power was back, its refinery was operating normally at 191,000 barrels per day.