Three Die in Accident at Sinopec’s Tianjin Refinery, Daily Says

Three people have been killed in an accident at China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (600028)’s refinery in Tianjin city, according to the official People’s Daily.

Falling cement caused by strong wind broke a platform which buried the workers during maintenance of a catalytic unit at the plant yesterday afternoon, the newspaper said on its website today, citing local authorities. Lv Dapeng, the Beijing-based spokesman for China Petroleum, or Sinopec, didn’t answer three calls to his office during working hours.

The Tianjin refinery in northern China has been shut for maintenance since Aug. 15 and will resume operations by early October, a company official said last month. The People’s Daily didn’t say whether the schedule will be affected by the accident. The plant has a crude-processing capacity of about 300,000 barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Separately, China Petrochemical Corp., Sinopec’s parent company, said yesterday that it will ask two refineries with a total capacity of 370,000 barrels a day and a chemical facility to suspend production after the state television station reported criticism of the plants by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Jing Yang in Shanghai at jyang251@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net

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Three Die in Accident at Sinopec’s Tianjin Refinery, Daily Says

Jerome Favre/Bloomberg

A China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) sign hangs in the background during a news conference in Hong Kong.

A China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) sign hangs in the background during a news conference in Hong Kong. Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg