Three employees of Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company (ADGAS) are in hospital following an explosion at the company's main production facility on Das Island. The men, described as an Egyptian supervisor and an Egyptian and an Emirati technician, were in stable condition in the burns unit of an Abu Dhabi hospital today. "They are OK. They are doing very well and everything is fine. It was not a large accident," said Salwa al Hosani, the head of communications at Mafraq Hospital.
According to a Gulf News report citing an ADGAS engineer, the explosion was sparked early yesterday evening by an electrical discharge. The report said an ADGAS maintenance management team and a group from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the 70 per cent owner of ADGAS, were investigating the incident. Officials of the companies could not be reached for comment. The Das Island explosion is the second recent incident at ADNOC oil and gas facilities resulting in serious injury or death of employees.
Three oil workers were killed and one was rendered unconscious last month after inhaling fumes of the toxic gas hydrogen sulphide in an incident at the Shah oilfield, south-west of Abu Dhabi, from which Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO) pumps oil. ADCO is another ADNOC operating unit. The companies have so far offered no comment on the results of their investigation of that incident.
At Das Island, natural gas pumped from an offshore field is processed and refrigerated to a temperature below minus 160 degrees Celsius so that it can be loaded in liquid form into specialised tankers for transportation overseas. The Das Island facilities, built in the 1970s, are the Gulf's oldest for LNG production. tarlisle@thenational.ae
