A fire at a pitch storage tank at Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited’s Visakh Refinery in Visakhapatnam was brought under control on the night of Monday, November 2, with no casualties reported. The HPCL refinery fire began at around 10 pm at a pitch intermediate storage tank, according to a statement from the state-run company. Firefighters from the refinery moved in at once, and the blaze was confined to the area around the tank.
HPCL said its Visakh Refinery Fire and Safety Team activated firefighting and emergency response measures as soon as the fire was detected. The company said the HPCL refinery fire was localised to the pitch tank area and was brought under control quickly. “All the Units of Refinery are working safely,” HPCL said in its statement, adding that there had been no casualties and no damage to any refinery units.
HPCL refinery fire: what police and officials said
Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner Shankhabrata Bagchi said the HPCL refinery fire was confined to the affected tank and posed no threat to other operational units of the refinery. He said no casualties or injuries had been reported and that the smoke was not considered hazardous at that stage. HPCL fire tenders worked on the blaze with support from additional fire teams from the city, officials said.
Residents in nearby areas reported hearing explosion-like sounds and seeing flames and thick black smoke rise from the facility, and videos of the blaze circulated on social media through the night. Police have not confirmed that an explosion took place. Revenue Divisional Officer Dileep Chakravarthy, who visited the site, said a small blast was reported at the refinery, after which the fire broke out, and that the blaze was later fully extinguished using equipment at the plant and equipment deployed by the Andhra Pradesh Fire Department.
HPCL refinery fire: cause still under investigation
The exact cause of the HPCL refinery fire had not been established in the updates published on November 3. HPCL did not disclose the extent of damage to the tank in its statement, and officials said the damage would be assessed further. Reports citing HPCL sources said a full tank explosion appeared unlikely, and the company has not confirmed a cause. The fire drew attention in the surrounding industrial and residential areas of Malkapuram and Sriharipuram, where residents watched smoke rise over the plant through the night.
Chakravarthy told reporters there was no cause for worry and asked people not to panic about the incident. “There is no cause for worry, and no injuries or casualties have been reported. People are requested not to panic about the incident,” he said. Officials said the HPCL refinery fire caused no deaths or injuries at any stage of the response, and that the refinery’s other units kept working safely while firefighters dealt with the tank.
HPCL refinery fire: the Visakh plant and its history
The HPCL refinery fire broke out at the Residue Upgradation Facility of the Visakh Refinery, the part of the plant where pitch is handled. Pitch is a dark, viscous residue left after petrol, diesel and gas oils are processed from crude oil, and the tank that caught fire stored pitch. The facility had been hit by an incident before, in September 2025, when a hydrogen leak caused a loud bang and a fire while a unit was still under construction. Nobody was hurt in that incident either, according to reports at the time.
HPCL owns and operates refineries in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam, with capacities of 9.5 million tonnes per annum and 15 million tonnes per annum respectively. The Visakh refinery was India’s first refinery on the east coast. It was commissioned in 1957 by Caltex Oil Refining India, with a crude processing capacity of 0.675 million tonnes per annum, and it has been expanded in phases to 15 million tonnes per annum. The Caltex refinery, along with its marketing facilities, was nationalised in 1976 and amalgamated with HPCL in 1978.
HPCL said in its November 3 statement that it remained committed to safety and emergency preparedness at the plant. The company has not yet published a fuller account of how the fire started or what repairs the tank will need. For the neighbourhoods around the refinery, the night ended with the HPCL refinery fire out, the plant’s units running, and no one reported hurt.