An explosion at a major Mexican refinery yesterday killed one worker and injured 10 others.
Pemex, the world's seventh largest crude producer and a large fuel importer, said a 32-year-old engineer was killed and two workers suffered serious burns on more than 75 per cent of their bodies when a compressor failure at the Cadereyta refinery's gas oil hydrotreater triggered an explosion and a fire.
Another eight workers suffered lesser injuries and were being treated in a hospital.
The blast forced Pemex to shut the hydrotreater and the coker at Cadereyta, Mexico's most sophisticated refinery and its third largest, with a capacity of 275,000 barrels per day.
"We felt the windows shake. It was only a few seconds, but the whole building shook," said Jose Luis Garza, a government employee in Juarez, about 15km from the refinery in northern Mexico.
Pemex did not say how long the two units, which support gasoline and diesel production, would be out of service, but in the meantime it said crude oil processing has been reduced by 15,000 bpd to 200,000 bpd.
The cause of the incident is under investigation.
US oil product futures jumped after the explosion, before paring gains in late trading.
The explosion comes in a year marred by serious accidents in the North American oil industry, including the Deepwater Horizon spill, a major pipeline incident in Michigan and an explosion at a Gulf of Mexico natural gas platform.
Hydrotreaters, which remove sulfur from fuels under high pressure in the presence of explosive hydrogen gas, are a critical component of modern refineries. Cokers transform low-value heavy fuel oil into motor fuels.
The two units were operating at the time of the incident.
Reuters