Maintenance Turnarounds at Chile's Bio Bio Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Bio Bio refinery, owned by Chile's state-owned oil company Empresa Nacional del Petroleo (Enap), is currently performing a planned maintenance turnaround on the 7,800-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Visbreaker unit.

Enap has three refineries in the country: Aconcagua, Gregorio and Bio Bio. The latter has a total production capacity of 113,000 barrels per day (BBL/d) and four divisions within the refinery: Ethylene, South, North and Delayed Coker. The Topping units, which generally process a mixture of crudes from Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, are currently processing at lower rates because of high crude oil prices.

Maintenance work in the Visbreaker began August 15. Once the unit is ready, it may remain on standby mode. The five-mechanical-day turnaround in the 13,800 BBL/d-Continuous Catalytic Reforming unit (CCR), previously set to begin on August 25, has been rescheduled and is set to be performed between October and November 2008; the date for this turnaround may vary depending on the unit's performance and internal consumption rates. The 28-mechanical-day planned maintenance work on the Ethylene unit, which was previously set to begin in November, has been rescheduled and will be performed in February 2009. The turnaround in the Visbreaker unit is the last one that will be performed this year.

Partial maintenance work in one of the furnace sections of the 13,000-BBL/d Delayed Coker was completed in April 2008; the unit will be de-rated again in January 2009 for approximately 20 days in order to change the furnace tubes of the remaining section. The unit will continue processing 1,000 cubic meters per day. As of today, all of the Bio Bio refinery's processing units, except for the Visbreaker, are online.

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