Inafis Traces Source Of Fire At Pertamina Refinery Balikpapan

The fire that occurred at the Pertamina Refinery Balikpapan Unit in Balikpapan/ANTARA/Muhammad Solih Januar City.

The Indonesian Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (Inafis) team of the National Police is still investigating the source of the fire that caused the Pertamina International Refinery (KPI) fire at the Balikpapan Unit in Balikpapan City, East Kalimantan Province, which occurred in the early hours of Saturday (25/5).

"The source of the fire is still being traced from where, and technically the team is conducting an investigation," said Balikpapan Police Chief Kombes Anton Firmanto as reported by ANTARA, Saturday, May 25.

Tim Inafis, lanjut dia, adalah penaksana teknis di bidang identifikasi yang berada di bawah Badan Reserse Kriminal atau Bareskrim Polri.

The Inafis team was already at the crime scene (TKP) to find out the cause of the fire in the crude oil distillation unit VI of PT KPI Balikpapan Unit by collecting evidence in the field.

The Balikpapan Police will coordinate with the Forensic Laboratory Team (Labfor) which will soon be brought in from East Java, to find out the cause of the fire.

"We usually deploy a team. Forensic Laboratory from the East Java Regional Police (East Java Police) to deal with the fires that occurred in Balikpapan," explained Anton Firmanto.

"We are also conducting an investigation to find out the exact cause of the fire," added General Manager of PT KPI Balikpapan Unit Bayu Arafat.

PT Pertamina (Persero) also deployed an oil and gas team (oil and gas) to determine the cause of the fire.

The hotspots came from the crude distillation unit (CDU) VI, according to him, which is the initial process of crude oil fluctination into fuel oil (BBM), liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and others.

The process is complex because there are many fluctuations in the pace of crude oil which is bait from the unit, but the fire was successfully extinguished at around 07.30.WITA without any casualties.

There were no casualties in the fire incident, of the nine employees who were on duty or from the fire fighting team, said Bayu Arafat.