DAMMAM, 21 November 2007 — A total of 40 people died in Sunday’s gas pipeline explosion in the Eastern Province, state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco said in a statement issued yesterday.
Among the 40 workers who lost their lives were 18 Pakistanis, seven Indians, seven Bangladeshis, six Saudis, one South African and one Nepalese, it said.
Nine workers of various nationalities were injured, six of whom have been discharged from hospital, the statement said.
King Fahd Hospital in Hofouf was reportedly holding 27 bodies and the rest were transferred to Safa Public Hospital. Most bodies were beyond recognition and required DNA testing for identification.
Saudi Aramco said that apart from its five Saudi employees, all the other dead worked for a contractor carrying out work on the pipeline.
Abdallah Jum’ah, CEO of Saudi Aramco, accompanied by a number of his aides, visited the site of the explosion on Monday.
Officials said the blaze had not affected oil or gas production in the world’s largest oil producer. “Necessary operational adjustments have been made to the gas system to normalize operations to ensure continuity of fuel supply,” the company said.
Saudi Aramco said on Sunday that the blaze erupted overnight on the Haradh-Uthmaniyah gas pipeline, 30 km from a major gas processing plant at Hawiyah, as maintenance work was being carried out. It said a high-level technical committee had been set up to investigate the explosion.
An industry source said the fire broke out while workers were welding a plate on to the pipeline but the Hawiyah gas plant was unaffected.
The plant is one of the major gas processing facilities in Saudi Arabia, built in the desert near the Al-Ghawar oil field, the world’s largest, and south of the city of Dhahran.
The plant, which produces 1.4 billion cubic feet (39.6 million cubic meters) of gas a day and cost $4 billion to build, was launched in October 2002 as the first to process only non-associated gas.
It produces enough natural gas to free up around 260,000 barrels per day of Arabian Light crude oil for export.
In January 2004, Saudi Arabia inaugurated another major natural gas and oil project in Haradh in the Eastern Province, including a gas plant capable of delivering 1.5 billion cubic feet (42.4 million cubic meters) per day to the Kingdom’s master gas system.
Saudi Arabia has proven natural gas reserves of 239 trillion cubic feet (6.76 trillion cubic meters), the fourth largest in the world.
