Iran mostly contains fire after southwest oil pipeline spill

DUBAI (Reuters) – Firefighters have contained most of a blaze that broke out after a pipeline carrying crude oil to Iran’s second-largest refinery ruptured on Sunday because of a landslide, the head of the state company in charge of oil pipelines said.

“Most of the fire … has been contained and operations teams are repairing the damaged section of the pipeline,” Qasem Arab Yarmohammadi told the Oil Ministry’s news agency, SHANA.

“Landslides have a long history in this area,” said Arab Yarmohammadi, chief executive of the Iranian Oil Pipeline and Telecommunications Company.

Khosro Kiani, an emergency official in southwestern Iran, where the blaze occurred, said earlier that the oil had spilled down a hard-to-access valley, which firefighting equipment could not reach, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported.