(Adds information on role of refinery)
DOUALA, June 1 (Reuters) - Cameroon's state oil refinery
declared force majeure on Saturday, after a storage tank
exploded overnight, causing a fire that shut down output at its
main refinery in Limbe but caused no deaths.
A letter to its partners seen by Reuters said the fire had
"caused a production stoppage at all of our units for a period
to be determined."
Cameroon's Sonara refinery, which is almost entirely state
owned apart from a 4% stake held by Total TOTF.PA , has a
capacity of 2.1 million tonnes of crude a year. It serves the
whole country, so any delay in getting it back up and running
has the potential to cause severe fuel shortages.
It is also a major supplier to the region, including
Nigeria, Togo and Ghana, with some products also being exported
to the United States and Europe, according to its website.
A Sonara spokesman declined to comment.
On Twitter, the company wrote that "there were no deaths nor
injured," in the blast.
A project has been under way for nearly a decade to try to
boost its capacity to 3.5 million tonnes, but Sonara has
struggled to raise the needed finance.