CADEREYTA, Mexico — An explosion ripped through a major Mexican refinery on Tuesday, killing one worker and pushing gasoline and diesel prices higher on worries state oil monopoly Pemex will have to import more fuel.

Pemex, the world's No. 7 crude producer and a large fuel importer, said a 32-year-old engineer was killed and two workers were severely burned when a compressor leak at the Cadereyta refinery's gas oil hydrotreater unit triggered an explosion and a fire.

Another eight workers suffered minor injuries. The fire was quickly put out but Pemex did not say how operations at Cadereyta, Mexico's third largest and most sophisticated refinery with a capacity of 275,000 barrels per day, were affected.

"We felt the windows shake. It was only a few seconds, but the whole building shook," said Jose Luis Garza, a government employee in Juarez, about 10 miles from the refinery in northern Mexico.

U.S. oil product futures jumped after the explosion, before paring gains in afternoon trading.

The explosion comes in a year marred by serious accidents in the North American oil industry, including the Deepwater Horizon spill, a major pipeline accident in Michigan and an explosion at a Gulf of Mexico natural gas platform.

Francisco Montano, a Pemex spokesman in Mexico City, said the blast occurred in one of the refinery's hydrotreating units, which removes sulfur from fuels under high pressure in the presence of explosive hydrogen gas.


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