Total SA Plans Turnarounds at Provence Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Total SA (NYSE:TOT) (Paris, France) is planning maintenance turnarounds for the company's 154,000-barrel- per-day (BBL/d) refinery in Provence. The turnarounds will occur in 2012 and 2014.

Created in 1935 and located near Marseille in the Bouches du Rhone region of southern France, the refinery produces a wide range of distillates such as liquified petroleum gas (LPG), gas oil, naphtha and fuels. The plant is connected to Ineos Group Limited (Hampshire, England) and Lavera Refinery through six pipelines.

One of the turnarounds, which will entail mainly cleaning and inspection, will be carried out in January 2012 and will involve the Distillation Area, which has nine units, including the atmospheric distillation unit, a vacuum unit, two hydrotreaters, two sulphur recovery units, a merox unit and two flares. Units are expected to remain offline for 49 non-production days.

Separately, the conversion area of the refinery will be brought offline for a major shutdown in April 2014 for 45 non-production days. The area has four units: a catalytic cracking unit, an alkylation unit, a visbreaker, and a continuous catalytic reformer.

Total carried out major maintenance work at the refinery in 2006. Units of the Distillation Area were modified to increase the production rate of the hydrodesulphurisation units to meet European fuel regulations, requiring the sulphur content of fuel to be no more than 10 parts per million. In October 2008, a new furnace was installed at the 38,500-BBL/d fluid catalytic cracking unit to increase the security of the unit and reduce sulfur emissions.

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