Cosmo Oil Finds Dead Worker in Refinery Tank in Japan

By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Cosmo Oil Co., a Japanese refiner, said one of its employees was found dead in a petroleum storage tank at a plant in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo.

The body of Minoru Konno, 56, a Cosmo Oil engineer at the 240,000 barrel-a-day refinery, was discovered at 9:30 a.m. local time today in a tank containing an unspecified volume of gasoil, Cosmo spokesman Katsuhisa Maeda said today by telephone.

The Ichihara City police department has started investigations and the cause of death is unknown, a police official said under condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way. Police got a call from the Tokyo- based petroleum producer at 6:07 p.m. yesterday saying Konno was missing, the official said.

Cosmo Oil was operating the refinery as usual as of 1:40 p.m. local time, Maeda said.

The Ichihara fire department has no plans to ask Cosmo Oil to suspend operations, a department official said. The fire department typically requires refiners to halt operations after accidents that threaten safety.

To contact the reporters on this story: Shigeru Sato in Tokyo at ssato10@bloomberg.net;