Essar Restarts Refinery After Emergency Shutdown, Prepares for Planned Maintenance

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (Delhi, India)--Essar Oil Limited (BSE:500134) (Mumbai, India) has successfully restarted the 316,000-barrel-per day (BBL/d) Vadinar Refinery, after it was shut down for six days. As reported in a previous article, the water feed pump line serving the process units burst on July 25, causing the refinery to trip offline. The refinery made the necessary repairs and restarted the process units on July 29. The refinery was running full capacity by July 30.

The major units in the refinery are the 316,000-BBL/d crude unit; the 74,000-BBL/d fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU); the 36,000-BBL/d naphtha hydrotreater; the 22,500-BBL/d reformer, and a 105,000-BBL/d diesel hydrotreater.

Essar Refinery is scheduled to begin a refinery-wide turnaround on September 18 to conduct maintenance on its process units. The shutdown was previously scheduled to begin in May or June, but was deferred to September because of a shortage of diesel caused by the Japan crisis and Middle Eastern unrest. The 35-day turnaround also aims to finish the revamp of existing units and tie in the units currently under construction as part of Phase I expansion. The expansion will increase the refinery's capacity from 240,000-BBL/d to 375,000-BBL/d, as well as increasing its complexity from 6.1 to 11.8.

Vadinar Refinery produces middle distillates such as aviation turbine fuel, kerosene and high-speed diesel, as well as liquefied petroleum gas and transport fuels conforming to Euro III and Euro IV product quality standards. There are plans to expand the refinery to 800,000 BBL/d over two phases.

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