An explosion at the Ahvaz oil pipelines in southern Iran caused a fire that took hours to extinguish, just one week after a gas pipeline explosion halted the flow of natural gas from Iran to Turkey for a day.
The Mehr News Agency reports that Iran’s largest oil pipeline exploded near Susa on August 5 at 1:30 AM. The pipeline moves up to 4,000 barrels of oil each day from the Lorestan region to the Ahvaz processing unit, about 100 kilometres south of the explosion site.
The cause of the blast has not yet been announced, but the fire reportedly was put out after 10 hours and the spilled oil has been completely cleared away.
Last week’s explosion in the gas pipelines to Turkey was attributed to the Free Life Party of Kurdistan. Iranian authorities later claimed they had arrested the perpetrators, adding that two were killed during the arrest and another five are in custody.
The authorities said the group had plans to carry out several other operations.