Costa Rica's Recope to Increase Capacity at Puerto Limon Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources Latin America (Cordoba, Argentina)--Costa Rica's state oil company Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo (Recope) (San José, Costa Rica) plans to expand its 25,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Puerto Limon refinery in Moin, Puerto Limon, to 65,000 BBL/d.

The main objective of the refinery upgrade and expansion project is to improve the processing capacity at the refinery. To achieve this goal, Recope and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) (Beijing, China) signed an agreement to establish a joint venture company to develop the project. The company was named Soresco and is currently performing a revision of the front-end engineering and design (FEED) work. Once completed, the company will begin the bidding process to select the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm.

The project involves the construction of a new 40,000-BBL/d crude unit; a vacuum unit; a 15,000-BBL/d diesel hydrotreater; a hydrocracker; a hydrogen unit; a 20,000-BBL/d delayed coker unit; and other units, as well as the revamp of existing units. Expectations are to begin the civil construction by mid-2012.

The Puerto Limon refinery was offline from the beginning of June 2011 until August 22 due to poor economic margins and a lack of crude oil supply. The company was able to restart the facility because when it signed a crude contract that was expected to expire by 2012. However, the refinery experienced unplanned issues in the 1,200-BBL/d platformer unit, which forced the entire complex to go back offline at the end of August.

The company has decided to keep all processing units offline until the $1 billion upgrade project is complete, which should be by the end of 2014. Throughout 2011 and the first half of 2012, Recope will perform inspections on all the existing processing units' equipment. Although 235,000 barrels of Saharan Blend and Ural crude oil cargo has already been delivered in Costa Rica, Recope has decided to export it together with the 165,000 barrels already stored at the refinery.

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