Power Outage Affects PDVSA’s El Palito Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). On October 3, 2007, a failure was experienced in Venezuela's National Power Grid brought about inconveniences at PDVSA’s El Palito Refinery, Carabobo, Venezuela. The electrical failure affected the 51,000 barrels per day Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU), which had to perform a preventive turnaround. The Continuous Catalytic Reformer (CCR) (54,000 barrels per day) and the Hydrofluoric Alkylation (18,000 barrels per day) Units, which work together with the FCCU were also affected and were not able to continue working at normal rates.

Safety procedures were followed and a technical work group at the refinery started working on the issue immediately after the power cut, and the refinery was able to re-start the FCCU at noon on October 4, 2007. The two other units, that had been kept circulating while repair work was performed on the affected unit, were expected to re-start later on the same day. It was stated by authorities from Venezuela’s state owned oil company that the other units in the refinery were able to continue working at normal rates and that fuel supply was not altered.

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