TRIPOLI: A fire broke out on Monday in a diesel tank at Libya’s Zawiya refinery days after the facility was hit by drone.
The circumstances of Monday's fire remained unknown, Brega Petroleum Marketing Company said in a statement.
Brega is owned by state oil firm National Oil Corporation (NOC) and is in charge of fuel supplies.
Zawiya refinery is the largest in the country while Ras Lanuf is out of operation and is located around 40 kilometers west of Tripoli.
The facility has a capacity of 120,000 barrels per day. It is connected to the country’s 300,000 bpd Sharara oilfield.
Firefighters worked to contain the blaze on Monday evening, the company said, adding that it was assessing the damage.
The tank, with estimated 4.5 million liters of gasoline, “was directly targeted,” NOC said in a statement, declaring an extreme state of emergency in the area.
It demanded competent authorities to “immediately intervene” and launch investigations into the incident.
Unverified footage posted online showed huge blazes and thick black smoke billowing in the sky in Zawiya city.
The refinery is still functioning without any suspension, two engineers working at the refinery said.
The incident came two days after a drone crashed into an untreated naphtha tank at the Zawiya refinery early on Saturday, causing a leak that staff managed to control.
