Explosion at Eni’s Livorno refinery brought under control by fire service

LONDON (ICIS)–An explosion at Italy’s energy major Eni at its Livorno refinery on Tuesday afternoon has been brought under control, according to emergency services.

The local fire services teams from Pisa, Lucca, and Florence were called to the site in Collesalvetti at around 14:30 local time to tackle the fire that broke out in the wake of an explosion.

It is not clear what impact this will have on base oils production, and the site had already been taken offline to carry out scheduled maintenance.

A post on social media network Twitter from the fire services, Vigili Del Fuoco, stated that reclamation operations remained in progress an hour after the incident was reported.

Both the fire service and local trade union Sindacato Usb Livorno stated that no one has been injured by the explosion and the situation appears to be under control, although an ambulance was initially called to the scene.

“[I have] no idea how long [production] will be down or anything,” said one petrochemicals source.

“It was in maintenance anyway, it looks like a very specific area, it doesn’t look like a very vast area that has been hit,” it added.

Eni produces at the site base oils Group I and II, with capacity of 591,197 tonnes/year and 35,000 tonnes/year, respectively.

Planned maintenance had been expected to finish by the end of November, but it is unclear whether this will be prolonged due to the recent explosion.

Eni had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

Additional reporting by Graeme Paterson and Samantha Wright