IVORIAN and French firemen finally on Tuesday extinguished a fire which has been raging in an oil depot since last week in the capital Abidjan. Abidjan residents were surprised by the fire outbreak last Thursday afternoon by at the depot of Cote d’Ivoire’s Security Petrol Stock, located at the Vridi Industrial zone, where 30000 metric tons of super petrol were being kept. The ministry of energy attributed the accident to a short circuit in a pipeline through which fuel was being transferred from one tanker to another. Ivorian energy minister Safiatou Ba N’daw disclosed that 30-million litres of fuel, representing one month of local consumption, went into flames, causing damages estimated at nine billion CFA francs. Also affected by the inferno are Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger, which import fuel through the port of Abidjan.