Dollar derided at OPEC summit

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that OPEC’s members have expressed interest in converting their cash reserves into a currency other than the depreciating U.S. dollar, which he called a “worthless piece of paper.”

His comments at the end of a rare summit of OPEC heads of state exposed fissures within the 13-member cartel.

The Iranian leader’s comments also highlighted the growing challenge that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, faces from Iran and its ally Venezuela within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency’s depreciation has concerned oil producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and has eroded the value of their dollar reserves.

Pipeline blast, fire kill 28

An accidental explosion and fire on a natural gas pipeline in eastern Saudi Arabia on Sunday killed 28 people and left 12 missing, Saudi officials said.

An unspecified number were wounded in the blaze, which did not disrupt gas supplies, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters during a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Riyadh.

National oil company Saudi Aramco said the fire broke out just after midnight while contract workers were linking a new pipe to the line.

Aramco is the world’s largest oil producer, located on the country’s east coast. Its Hawiyah plant produces 310,000 barrels a day of ethane and liquefied natural gas.

DONETSK, Ukraine

63 miners die in explosion

A methane blast ripped through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine early Sunday, killing at least 63 miners in the ex-Soviet nation’s worst mining accident in years, emergency officials said.

More than 360 miners were rescued, but 37 others remained trapped inside the mine – one of Ukraine’s largest and deepest – with a raging fire hampering efforts to save them, officials said.

The explosion occurred about 3 a.m. more than 3,300 feet deep inside the Zasyadko mine in the regional capital Donetsk, the heart of the country’s coal mining industry, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

Authorities evacuated 367 miners. Twenty-eight were hospitalized, the ministry said.

Vitaliy Kvitkovsky, a miner in his thirties, was among those evacuated. He said he had to scramble over the bodies of dead colleagues to climb to the surface.

“The temperature increased sharply and there was so much dust that I couldn’t see anything,” Kvitkovsky said in footage broadcast on Ukraine’s Channel 5 television. “So I was moving by touch over dead bodies along the rail track.”