Amazingly, no one was injured when one of Europe's largest oil refineries, like, totally burned with the force of a thousand suns yesterday. And obviously it's in Russia.


The refinery is OJSC TANECO, formerly known as the Nizhnekamsk refinery, in Tartarstan. If you get into your Lada and drive due East from Moscow, you'll get there in about 14 hours.

Reuters reports that the fire was put out the same evening it started and there were no injuries. It will take a few months to get production back up.


It churns out 140,000 barrels of gas and diesel a day, and that production all goes to Russia.

This picture (and the above video) turned up on English Russia and gives you a sense of scale of the blaze.

Photo Credit: English Russia