Today's Refining Hotline Headlines

North America
Valero Refining expects the units at its 190,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) refinery in Memphis, Tennessee will be fully operational within 24 hours.

Marathon, on July 30, shut down the 29,500-BBL/d Fluid Catalytic Cracker Unit (FCCU) along with the 10,000-BBL/d Sulfuric Alkylation (SF alky) Unit for minor maintenance on the south side of its 131,000-BBL/d refinery in El Paso, Texas. The units should be back online by this weekend.

International
Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company's (KIPIC) 205,000-BBL/d Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) 3 at its 615,000-BBL/d Mina Al Zour Refinery in Kuwait, is now operating at full throughput, and all three crude units are now up and running. KIPIC continues with test runs of the 110,000-BBL/d Atmospheric Residue Desulfurization (ARDS) 3 Unit and 62,000-BBL/d Diesel Hydrotreater (DHT) 2 Unit and expects commercial startup by August 15.

State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP) has begun the test run of eight units at its 140,000-BBL/d Karbala Refinery in Iraq, but the refinery is facing issues during test runs of the downstream units. The commercial startup of the Vacuum Distillation unit is expected by August 15, while other downstream units are tentatively expected to start up by August 30. As of now, the crude unit continues to operate at around 50% capacity.

Petronor SA, on July 26, was forced to shut down the 130,000-BBL/d Crude 1 Unit at its 220,000-BBL/d Bilbao Refinery in Spain, after leakage on the unit's pump caused a fire. Although the fire was contained, because of the crude unit shutdown, the 92,000-BBL/d Vacuum 3 (V3), 42,000-BBL/d Visbreaker (UV3) and 24,150-BBL/d Naphtha Desulfurization (N1) units and associated units also are offline. The units are expected to resume operations by August 17.

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