China sentenced 14 people, including local officials and employees at a state company, to prison Monday for their role in a 2013 pipeline blast that killed 63 and injured another 156, state media reported.

China sentenced 14 people, including local officials and employees at a state company, to prison Monday for their role in a 2013 pipeline blast that killed 63 and injured another 156, state media reported.

The pipeline, owned by a subsidiary of China's largest oil refiner Sinopec, exploded as a result of drilling by maintenance staff.

A court in the eastern city of Qingdao, where the accident occurred, meted out sentences of three to five years to the defendants, the Xinhua state news service reported.

An official inquiry into the blast in 2014 identified negligence as the primary cause of the explosion, taking Sinopec and the city's government to task for "not identifying and correcting potential safety hazards".

The pipeline itself, according to the probe, was improperly designed and the emergency response was poorly handled.

The disaster's consequences seem to have mostly fallen on low-level bureaucrats.

Six municipal officials received jail time, as well as eight people from the Sinopec subsidiary, Xinhua said.