Two Iranian engineers died during testing at the Tehran Refinery. Mehr News Agency reports the incident occurred on Tuesday at 3:30 PM local time.
Ali Asghar Hosseini, a spokesman for the National Oil Engineering and Construction Company of Iran, announced that the engineers fell from a crane during technical tests. It happened as plans were being implemented to improve oil products from the refinery.
Hosseini added that two other employees were injured in the incident and are currently in hospital. Investigations are underway to determine what went wrong.
Tehran Oil Refinery has been expanding its activities in order to improve its products, in particular its gasoline. Authorities are trying to increase output to 2 million litres of high-quality gasoline per day within the next year and a half.
Last month, an explosion occurred at the Abadan Refinery in southwestern Iran during a visit by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Some analysts suggested the refinery was forced to rush its launch and, therefore, had not finished necessary testing.
Ahmadinejad did not suffer any injuries in the incident.
Iranian oil refineries have been gearing up for a swift increase in gasoline production ever since United Nations sanctions restricted the sale of gasoline to Iran. Despite being a major oil producer, Iran imports over half of the gasoline it needs due to limited refinery capacity.
