Stemming from political motives The Iranian regime’s authorities to rapidly expand oil projects, have removed the safety and critical facilities of oil refineries from their list of prerequisites, this way, the lives of workers and refinery personnel will be at risk due to the lack of work safety.

The construction of the Persian Gulf Star Oil Refinery has started with 700 hectares since 2006, and it was supposed to be operational by the end of 2018 if timely financing was provided.

However, the authorities set up the facility much earlier than expected by removing some essential elements, including those related to the safety of the various phases.

According to a report by the senior executive of the Persian Gulf Oil Refinery, describing the safety of the refinery, one of the engineers in this refinery lost his life in the past few days due to lack of safety. The report also reflects the 8-month wage arrears of at least 500 workers at the refinery.

The report reads in part:

The evening of Sunday, 24 September 2017, at 19:30, an explosion and fire occurs on the inland gas pipeline leading to the north of the Persian Gulf oil refinery. During this incident, engineer Ehsan Davoudi Jonghaei, Master of Petroleum Engineering, with field operator position suffers 100% third degree burns, and unfortunately loses his life after 3 days of hospital care.

The gas pipeline route to the Oil Refinery (outside the refinery) is under the responsibility of the National Gas Company and the company is responsible for the incident.

The cause of the incident is the failure to install and make fully operational the F & G (fire and gas) detection system and (fire-fighting) or the fire extinguishing and warning system, which lead to the gas leakage not being detected, and engineer Davoudi following the shift changes at 19:00, faces gas explosion after entering the conex.

The oil industry experts agree that the establishment of a fire extinguishing system for any oil facility is one of the most basic requirements for oil and gas projects.

But in recent years due to political motivation for the completion and utilization of major oil projects and for propaganda usage by the system without delay in political junctures such as elections and … and the necessity of reaching the refinery’s final product as soon as possible, usually the installation and operation of a fire extinguishing system falls to lower priority by the decision of the refinery’s chief executives.

In this non-principled and non-normative upgrade of the project speed, only human casualties and damage caused by this neglect of safety will increase.

The senior managers of this mega project insisted on ignoring the fire safety and warning system to the extent that even the executives from the refinery’s startup contractor who had friction against such decisions, that is, speeding up the deadline for the completion of the project at the cost of the people’s lives, (former site administrator and former launch manager) were laid off.
It should be noted that the contractor for the construction and installation of the Persian Gulf Star Oil Refinery, Falat Faradast Energy, is affiliated to the IRGC’s Khatam Headquarters and there is no real leverage to pressure these companies to carry out the correct, high-quality and timely project.

As a result, the managers of the Persian Gulf oil refinery inevitably impose semi-finished and incomplete units to the start-up company before the mechanical completion of the project, which launch the project while it is still completing.

Currently, the salaries of the company’s employees involved in the Persian Gulf Oil Refinery Project have been postponed for 3 months, and the salaries of about 500 of the individuals who were in the contracting companies were not paid for more than 8 months.

Source » ncr-iran