Costa Rica's Puerto Limon Refinery Experiences Unplanned Overhaul

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Two units at Recope's Puerto Limon refinery experienced an unplanned shutdown as a result of a problem at the refinery's water treatment plant last week. All of the processing units are now offline.

Last week, a hard water treatment system collapsed, and the leakage forced the boilers to be shutdown. The topping and LPG units, which were the only two online, were shut down because of the lack of steam.

The Puerto Limon refinery has had only two of its nine processing units online because of several problems. Costa Rica's Puerto Limon refinery has only two of its nine processing units online because of several problems. The plant generally processes Venezuelan Mesa 30 crude oil, but because Venezuela is not selling that type of crude to Recope, it started receiving Santa Barbara crude oil at the beginning of February. The thermal cracker unit proved to be unable to process the latter and had to be shut down. Plant authorities are working to get another type of crude similar to Mesa 30 from Venezuela. The thermal cracker unit could be restarted if the crude is available. For more details, view related February 14 2008, news article - Costa Rica's Puerto Limon Refinery Experiencing Several Problems.

The boilers were scheduled to be restarted February 28, 2008, and the topping and LPG units are expected to be restarted in about a week after the boilers produce enough steam.

The platforming unit, which has been offline for two months because of a compressor problem, had been scheduled to come online last week; however, because of the ongoing unplanned overhaul, its restart was delayed until the second week of March 2008. The thermal cracker, which had to be shut down in early February 2008 because of processing problems of Santa Barbara crude oil, will remain offline in March 2008. Authorities plan to restart the unit in April 2008 when they will start receiving the Mesa 30 crude oil. The asphalt vacuum unit, offline since December 2007, is also scheduled to be restarted in April 2008.

The 30-day planned overhaul to be carried out in November of this year is still scheduled. The date has not been changed because of the ongoing unplanned turnaround at the refinery.

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