India's Essar Oil Limited Plans Refinery Shutdown

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (Delhi, India)--Last week, Essar Oil Limited (EOL) (BSE:500134) (Mumbai, India) was forced to shut down the company's 316,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) refinery in Vadinar, Gujarat. The shutdown was caused by a burst water-feed pump line serving the process units. The line burst on the evening of July 25, automatically tripping the process units. The refinery was expected to return online by the weekend.

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 the 105,000-BBL/d diesel hydrotreater.

The 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 pushed back to September because of a shortage of diesel caused by the Japan crisis and Middle Eastern unrest. The 35-day turnaround also aims at finishing the revamp of existing units and tie in units currently under expansion as a part of a Phase I expansion. The expansion will increase the refinery's crude unit capacity to 360,000 BBL/d and will increase its refining complexity from 6.1 to 11.8.

Vadinar Refinery, which began commercial production on May 1, 2008, is among the largest single-location refineries in the world. The 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, of which Phase i operations are nearing completion.

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