Future Planned Turnarounds at Germany's Karlsruhe MiRO Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The 299-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Karlsruhe MiRO refinery, owned by Mineralol Raffinerie Oberrhein GmbH in the German city of Karlsruhe, is already planning the bidding process for the main contracts to undertake future shutdowns scheduled to be performed the first quarters 2010 and 2012.

The Mineralol Raffinerie Oberrhein GmbH is a joint-venture between ConocoPhillips Continental Holding GmbH, a subsidiary of ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) (Houston, Texas); Esso Deutschland GmbH, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) (Irving, Texas); Ruhr Oel GmbH, a 50/50 joint venture between BP (NYSE:BP) (London, England) and Petroleos de Venezuela SA (Caracas, Venezuela); and Shell Deutschland Oil GmbH, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS-A) (The Hague, Netherlands). Authorities at the refinery generally program shutdowns in sequence, dividing the facility into two working areas to prevent the complete shutdown of the refinery's production.

The last planned shutdown performed at the refinery started on March 6, 2006, and took around 20 days to complete; only 30% of the 458-hectare site was stopped: the 272,000-BBL/d Topping 3, Vacuum 4, Reformer 4 and other units were inspected and cleaned. The same date and duration was selected in 2007 for the remaining 70% of the refinery. This shutdown affected the 9,000-BBL/d Topping 1 unit, 180,000-BBL/d Topping 2, Vacuum 1, Vacuum 2, Vacuum 3 and other associated units. The turnaround was completed in 29 non-production days. In addition to the examinations of the equipment prescribed by law, repairs, cleaning and work on the catalytic converters was part of the scheduled work.

The MiRO complex is a fully integrated plant with high capacity to convert lower-cost feedstocks into higher-value products, primarily with a fluid catalytic cracker and delayed coker that process crude and other feedstocks supplied by each of the partners in proportion to their respective ownership interests. The refinery's main products are gasoline, diesel fuel, middle distillates and specialty products, along with a small amount of residual fuel oil.

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