By Krisztina Than
BUDAPEST, May 22 (Reuters) – An explosion at Hungarian oil and gas group MOL’s petrochemical plant in Tiszaujvaros, eastern Hungary, has killed one person and injured several others, the company said in a statement on Friday.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar said in a Facebook post that his economy minister Istvan Kapitany and MOL’s executive chairman Zsolt Hernadi were en route to the plant. Magyar also posted a photo that showed huge black smoke billowing out of the plant.
“An explosion occurred at MOL Petrochemicals’ site in Tiszaújváros during the restart of the Olefin 1 plant. The fire was localised by firefighters, and the intervention is still ongoing,” MOL said.
“The circumstances of the accident are being investigated by experts,” the company added, without giving further details.
MOL shares were down 1.9%, underperforming the wider market in Budapest.
Kapitany said on Facebook that according to current information, a compressor exploded during the restart of the Olefin 1 plant and the fire was still being put out.
In a separate post, he said that among the injured, one person had suffered life-threatening respiratory burns and seven people suffered minor burns. He said the injured were transported to hospitals in the nearby cities of Debrecen and Miskolc.
The Olefin 1 plant is a steam cracker unit at MOL’s petrochemical plant in Tiszaujvaros. The production capacity of MOL’s Olefin-1 plant is approximately 370,000 metric tons of ethylene per year. There are two steam crackers in Tiszaujvaros with 660 kt/y ethylene capacity according to MOL’s own website.
MOL uses the majority of its ethylene internally to manufacture polyethylene plastics, which are sold to the plastics and packaging industries.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than, additional reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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