Explosion at Indonesia Pertamina’s refinery arm unit injures 9 – statement

JAKARTA (Reuters) – An explosion at a refinery owned by a Pertamina PT unit in western Indonesia injured nine people, the state energy firm said on Sunday, adding to two dozen deaths from two other fires over the past month.

The explosion late on Saturday in a gas compressor caused “minor” injuries from glass shards and damaged several houses in the city of Dumai on Sumatra island, PT Kilang Pertamina Internasional (KPI) said in a statement. The cause was under investigation.

A fire on March 3 at Pertamina’s Plumpang fuel terminal in Jakarta, one of the country’s oldest and largest, killed more than 20 people. Three died from a March 26 fire on a tanker carrying Pertamina oil to the islands of Bali and Lombok.

KPI apologised for Saturday’s incident, a spokesperson said, adding that a “recovery process” was underway after the fire had been extinguished. Several units were affected and stopped by the explosion and fire, but the rest were operating as usual, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question on the impact on production or supply, but KPI said the national fuel stock was “safe”.

(Reporting by Bernadette Christina; Writing by Stanley Widianto; Editing by William Mallard)