What happened

A newly installed crude-oil heating furnace exploded in the crude distillation unit at Ghana's only refinery. A refinery source said a damper failed to open and prevented heat from escaping through the chimney, destroying the furnace and forcing an emergency shutdown. No casualties were reported. The furnace had been commissioned in December 2016 at a reported cost of roughly €5–5.8 million. Operators planned to reconfigure the unit around a second furnace, initially expecting crude throughput of about 30,000 barrels per day rather than the refinery's 45,000-bpd nameplate capacity; after the damaged furnace was dismantled, later Ghanaian reporting put capacity at about 28,000 bpd. Contemporaneous Graphic Online reporting dates the blast to 26 January, while the Reuters account was published on 27 January; this record uses the incident date and notes the report date separately.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.