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Essar, IOC say no damage from quake

Essar Steel's facilities at Hazira and the Essar refinery construction site at Jamnagar have not been affected, said a company release.

"There has been no damage to Essar's facilities at Hazira or Jamnagar. The operations and production at the Steel plant were not affected at all, and are functioning normally. There has been no damage to any of Essar Group's facilities in Gujarat," the media release stressed.

Meanwhile, State-run Indian Oil Corp said its refinery in Gujarat suffered no damage from a powerful earthquake which shook western India early on Friday.

"Our Gujarat (Koyali) refinery is safe. There is no damage to life or property," a senior IOC official told Reuters.

IOC operates a 1.035 million tonne monthly output refinery in the state.

But the official said IOC's Kandla-Bhatinda oil products pipeline had been shut down by a power outage at Kandla.

The pipeline, which has a capacity of 8.5 million tonnes, supplies oil products to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

"We have had some damage at Kandla port. But there are no reports of any fire," he said.

He said he did not know whether operations at the port had been shut down.

Kandla is the busiest port in India and serves the hinterland of western, central and northern India. It handles crucial imports of petroleum products, crude oil and chemicals and exports of agricultural commodities.

Oil traders hope damage to Kandla would not paralyse operations for long.

"After the Taiwan earthquake, work came to a halt but it took a couple of days to assess the damage after which things came back to normal at the port," one said.

The IOC official said IOC teams were already at the site trying to assess the damage.

"Power is not there. We are trying to work out other alternatives," he said.

Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said the death toll from the earthquake could rise above 1,000.

The quake, which was measured at 7.9 on the open-ended Richter scale by the U.S. Geological Survey, was the most powerful to strike the region in half a century.

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