A heater malfunction is being blamed for the fire that struck an OGE power plant in Oklahoma City on Thursday.
The fire was allowed to burn itself out after a 7,000-gallon fuel tank caught fire sometime after 7 a.m. No one was injured and the fire finally died late in the afternoon. But for hours, it produced huge black, billowing clouds of smoke.
The tank contained heating oil and glycerol and is owned by ONEOK which supplies the power plant with natural gas to run its seven turbines. Officials explained the natural gas used by the turbines is preheated to make sure the turbines run more efficiently.
As a result of the fire, the Mustang Power Plant was taken off line and put into what a spokesman called an outage status.