Maintenance Shutdowns Planned at Cartagena Refinery in Colombia

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Ecopetrol S.A., Colombia's state-owned oil company and the fourth-largest oil company in Latin America, is planning to perform a 30 mechanical-day maintenance turnaround at six of its processing units in February 2008.

Ecopetrol processes crude oil and produces fuels and petrochemicals at its refineries: Barrancabermeja (Santander), Cartagena (Bolivar), Apiay (Meta) and Orito (Putumayo). Altogether, the refineries produce about 300,000 barrels per day of various fuels and petrochemical products.

The Cartagena refinery experienced a power outage on October 5, 2007. The incident was caused by the short circuiting in a feeder of the cooler, which caused the visbreaking unit to stop working. The unit could not be immediately restarted because of coking on the furnace. For details, see related November 1, 2007, article - Colombian Refinery Experiences Unplanned Outage.

Planned maintenance shutdowns in the fluid catalytic cracker unit, sulfur recovery, Merox, sour water, amine treatment and polymerization are expected to start on February 1, 2008. Apart from regular cleaning of the units, the refractory, raisers, slide valves, chimney jacket and flare are scheduled to be changed during the turnaround. The plants will perform three short 10-day planned turnarounds in the visbreaker during 2008. The first one will be carried out on January 10, the second one in May and the last one in September 2008. Maintenance work in the atmospheric distillation and vacuum will be performed in 2010. All of the processing units are online and running at normal rates.

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