KARACHI: A mysterious huge fire that erupted during drilling for a high-rise construction near an oil refinery in the Korangi Creek area on Friday night could not be controlled till Saturday night, prompting authorities to abandon firefighting and seek experts’ help to ascertain the exact cause of the inferno.

A police spokesperson said in a statement that the fire suddenly erupted during drilling for a borehole at a TPL Properties housing project near Salim Habib University at Korangi Creek.

Rescue-1122 Director General Abid Shaikh said that the fire was contained in a 300-400-square-yard area and it posed no imminent danger to any nearby settlement.

On Saturday night, Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab, Commissioner Hasan Naqvi and Managing Director of the Pakistan Refinery Limited Zahid Mir held a press conference and assured the people that efforts were underway to control the fire.

PRL chief says blaze probably caused by ‘shallow gas’, will take one to three weeks to dissipate

Mr Mir said that the oil refinery was very close to the site of the fire. He said that the fire seemed to be caused by “shallow gas” and said that such incidents had occurred there before as well.

He said that the gas would dissipate within one to three weeks, but the fire needed to be monitored for a few more days. The entire area had been made secure and the situation will be resolved in a few days, he said.

Another Rescue-1122 official, Hassan Khan, told Dawn that they received information at 11pm on Friday that a fire had erupted in an underground gas line. He said that when firefighters arrived at the scene, they saw flames coming out of a deep hole on land designated for a high-rise housing project.

He said that a representative of the housing project claimed they had been digging a 1,200-foot borehole for the past 10 days.

However, he questioned their claim and said that it was unusual to dig such a deep borehole just to get subsoil water.

He said that it appeared that the fire broke out during the digging work as the company’s heavy machinery was also gutted.

The Rescue-1122 chief told Dawn that 20 fire tenders used massive quantities of water and foam but the fire could not be controlled.

He said experts of Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) conducted soil testing of the area and sent the samples to a lab to know what had triggered the fire.

He said the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) had claimed that there was no underground gas pipeline in the area.

Keeping in view a nearby refinery, samples had been taken to know whether there were any underground oil reserves, he added.

He did not rule out the possibility that pockets of underground oil or gas might have emerged during the digging work.

Another official said they had stopped firefighting efforts and only five fire tenders were there to meet any eventuality.

He said they obtained information about identical incidents took place in other parts of the world and assessed that the fire tended to continue for one or two days.

Meanwhile, TPL Properties issued a press release and stated that their team was “proactively managing a natural fire that ignited in an open area adjacent to the boundary of its Mangrove property”.

“The fire has been largely contained through the diligent efforts of the fire department, supporting rescue agencies, local government authorities, and the TPL team,” it said, adding: “According to our assessment and as further confirmed through official reports, no injuries or damage has been reported as a result of the incident.”

It said that an investigation was being initiated to ascertain the cause and circumstances of the fire.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2025