"There is very minimal damage. The hydrocracker can be restarted in four, five days but one has to go through the whole maintenance and inspection procedure which will take about 10 days," an IOC spokesman said.

Five people were killed when the hydrogen gas compressor in the new refinery's hydrocracker unit caught fire early on Friday.

The hydrocracker was immediately shut down.

The spokesman said the secondary processing loop -- via the hydrocracker -- had been shut down, and the crude distillation unit was running at 80 per cent capacity. "Crude processing has been scaled down to 80 per cent tominimise the loss in light and middle distillates," he said.

A hydrocracker uses processed gas oil as feedstock to produce high quality gasoline, middle distillates and lubricants.

The Panipat hydrocracker, which has an annual processing capacity ofone million tonnes, was started in April.

IOC said there was a change in the yield pattern with more heavy distillates and less middle distillates being produced.

The refinery has an annual capacity of 6.0 million tonnes but processed only 2.22 million tonnes in 1998/99 (April/March) because it had been shut down for almost a year due to a technical snag and was re-commissioned in phases from October.

A four-member panel headed by a senior IOC official has been set up to investigate the cause of the fire.