US oil major Chevron Corporation is partly to blame for a June 18th accident caused by a gas leak at Kuwait's Shuaiba refinery that killed two oil workers, a ministerial commission said Sunday.
The commission, formed by Oil Minister Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah, blamed Chevron for a number of technical mistakes in the preparation of an aviation fuel unit for operation, Al-Watan newspaper reported.
It called on the legal department of Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC), which owns all three of the emirate's refineries, to study the possibility of taking legal action against the giant US oil firm.
The call comes just one week after a separate parliamentary commission urged the oil ministry to take legal action against Chevron, holding it responsible for the accident at Shuaiba.
Chevron rejected the parliamentary commission claims and denied it was involved in any way in the fatal accident.
The accident saw two Kuwaitis die of suffocation from hydrogen sulphide gas, which leaked at one of the units at Shuaiba refinery, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Kuwait City.
The unit was due to begin operations with the help of Chevron after a long shutdown after it was destroyed during the US-led military offensive that evicted Iraqi forces in 1991. It operated briefly in 1994 but has since remained closed - KUWAIT CITY (AFP)
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