Fire Shuts Down Delayed Coker at Petrobras' Regap Refinery in Brazil

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--A fire broke out on July 21 in the 24,000-barrel-per-day delayed coker unit of Petrobras' (NYSE:PBR) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) the Regap refinery in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The fire occurred in the pre-heating battery after a leakage. The fire was controlled on the same day; however, the unit remains offline. The refinery's other processing units were not affected. Plant officials are evaluating the damage in order to perform maintenance work on the unit and hope to have it operating by July 26.

The plant still plans to carry out a maintenance shutdown in the delayed coker, as well as in the hydrotreater and hydrogen generation unit, beginning on August 26. For details, view related June 24, 2008, news article - Petrobras' REGAP Refinery Plans Maintenance Shutdowns for the Next Four Years.

A delayed coker increases the conversion of the crude distillate residue into major value products, such as liquefied petroleum gas, naphtha, diesel and gas oil. RPBC (Cubatao, Sao Paulo), REPLAN (Paulinia, Sao Paulo), REFAP (Rio Grande do Sul) and REDUC (Rio de Janeiro) are Petrobras' only refineries that have a delayed coker. Petrobras plans to build new delayed cokers in all of its refineries.

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