Valero Expects Normal Operations at San Nicolas Refinery by Mid-November 2010

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)-- Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE:VLO) (San Antonio, Texas) is performing major maintenance work in most of the processing units at the 235,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) San Nicolas refinery in Aruba. The units will be restarted in two different phases starting in September 2010.

The refinery was temporarily shut down in July 2009 due to poor refining margins. Authorities announced that a 90-day refinery-wide turnaround commenced in early June this year to prepare the units to restart. All processing units remain offline for maintenance repairs.

Although the 135,000-BBL/d Crude 7 and associated downstream units were expected to have oil-in performed on September 1, it is now expected to be performed 15 days after. The plan is to restart C7 with the 30,000-BBL/d Vacuum unit, the 45,000-BBL/d Hydrotreater 1 (D-1), the 65,000-BBL/d D-2, the 65,000-BBL/d D- 3, and a hydrogen unit. The 35,000-BBL/d Coker 1 unit will come online a week later. The second half of the plant will not restart until the end of October, which will include the 150,000-BBL/d Crude 5 unit and associated downstream units. The refinery is expected to reach normal production by mid-November this year.

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