BP's German Emsland Refinery Planning Future Shutdowns

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Deutsche BP AG (Bochum, Germany), a subsidiary of BP plc (NYSE:BP) (London), is preparing to undergo scheduled maintenance works at the company's 88,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Emsland refinery in Lingen, Germany. The maintenance shutdown will begin March 16, 2009, and is scheduled to last 14 days. Work will take place in the refinery's Conversion, Desulfurization and Reformer Areas. Units such as Delayed Coker 1, Delayed Coker 2, Calciner, Hydrodesulfurization Units for diesel, kerosene and naphtha, along with several downstream units like the Continuous Catalyst Regeneration Unit, the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Unit and the Alkylation Unit will be checked and cleaned up. Decoking will be done on a furnace associated with the Conversion units. The two Crude Distillation Units, along with the Vacuum and Petrochemical areas will be operational during this time. All units are expected to be back on line by March 29.

In 2006, a complete planned shutdown took place at the refinery, which lasted 42 non-production days in total, from mid-August 2006 until the first days of October. About 3,500 workers were involved in the overhaul, representing more than 800,000 man hours, 600,000 of which were contractor hours in an effort to meet government regulations. The project, called "TAR 2006," demanded a total investment of $72 million and took more than three years of planning; furthermore, it represented the first complete shutdown for BP Lingen since it was inaugurated more than fifty years ago. Even though the governmental regulations require planned turnarounds to be performed every five years, Emsland Refinery has managed through constant check-ups performed every six years to continue operating without inconveniences. The next mayor shutdown will be held in 2011.

The refinery, located in southwest Lower Saxony, was commissioned in 1953 and went into operation in 1958. Major production outputs are LPG (propane and butane), gasoline, jet fuels, diesel fuel, light and heavy heating oil, petroleum coke and calcinated petroleum coke, among other products. The refinery is considered one of Europe's leading conversion refineries thanks to its thermal and catalytic cracking units (cokers and hydrocrackers) that process two different crude types. Crude Unit 1 processes one-third of the crude oil extracted from oilfields surrounding the region of the refinery. Crude 2 processes foreign crude oil transported to the production facility through the NWO pipeline.

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