A telephone bomb threat forced the evacuation of most workers from the Lytton oil refinery in the northern Australian city of Brisbane on Thursday, police and refinery owners Caltex Australia Ltd. said.
Caltex, Australia's only listed oil marketer and refiner, said operations at its 105,000 barrels per day refinery were unaffected although truck access had been suspended. "Employees at the refinery and adjacent terminal ... have been safely evacuated, except for essential operators, who are in a secure area," Eion Turnbull, Caltex's refining general manager, said in a statement.
"There is no threat to fuel supply," he said.
Australia, a close U.S. ally, has been on a medium security alert level since after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States but has never suffered a major peacetime attack on home soil.
Caltex spokesman Richard Beattie said the bomb threat and evacuation had not affected production.
"It hasn't affected production at all because the operators controlling the refinery are in a secure area," Beattie said. Police declared an emergency but gave few details about the threat other than to say it had been made by telephone to the refinery on the outskirts of the city. A bomb squad team was at the refinery, they said.The refinery had been evacuated and an exclusion zone set up around it as a precaution, police said, although residents living near the refinery had not been told to evacuate.
The Lytton refinery was commissioned in 1965 and is the largest petroleum fuels refinery in Queensland state and fifth-largest fuels refinery in Australia.On average, production at the Lytton refinery is comprised of 45 percent petrol, 35 percent diesel, 13 percent jet fuel, 2 percent fuel oil and 5 percent LPG and other gases.
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