Dan Britton, president of Fairbanks Natural Gas, said the gas flow to the plant and its power supply were shut down Thursday morning as firefighters responded to the blaze. No one was hurt in the accident.
The plant restarted at 50 percent capacity at about 11 p.m. Thursday and ramped up further Friday, Britton said. Fairbanks Natural Gas officials said later in the day that the plant was back to 100 percent.
The 3,000-square-foot maintenance building was located away from the production plant, where the company super-chills natural gas into a liquid that then is trucked to customers in Fairbanks.
In all, three explosions occurred over about two hours in the maintenance building, which stored more than 30 55-gallon drums of oil, said James Steele, Central Mat-Su fire chief. The company said the drums most likely contained waste oil being stored for transport to a recycling facility. Britton said the company believes the waste oil drums generated the explosions.
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