PDVSA Restarts Willemstad Isla Refinery after Power Outage

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA is in the process of restarting the 325,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Willemstad Isla refinery in Curacao. The refinery went offline December 19 after an unexpected power outage.

Utilities were not restored until December 20. Consequently, the restart process could not begin until December 21.The 48,000-BBL/d Feed Cracker 1 and 45,000-BBL/d Thermal Cracker 2 units were restarted that day and are currently processing at 85% and 77% capacities, respectively. The 48,000-BBL/d Feed Cracker 2 is also online. The 50,000-BBL/d fluid catalytic cat cracker has already been restarted and is currently processing at 87% capacity even though it had some problems during the restart process stemming from steam pressure issues. The 160,000-BBL/d Crude 3 unit is operating at 82% capacity. Refinery personnel have begun to restart the 20,000-BBL/d platformer, 37,000-BBL/d diesel hydrotreater, 26,000-BBL/d naphtha hydrotreater, 6,000-BBL/d alky and mild hydrotreater units. The 45,000-BBL/d Crude 2A unit is in the start-up process. The refinery is estimated to resume normal operation during the weekend.

The refinery experienced two power outages this year. The first one occurred on April 9 as several units from the hydrotreatment operation area were reaching normal production rates after a 50-day planned maintenance shutdown. For more details, view related April 10, 2008, news article - Power Outage Forces All Units Offline at PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery. The second outage occurred on April 14. For details, view related April 14, 2008, news article - PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery Experiencing Another Power Outage. Because of these two power outages, planned maintenance on the 45,000-BBL/d Crude CD2A and 48,000-BBL/d vacuum unit, also known as Feed Cracker Unit 2, was delayed for four months. Both units were scheduled to begin 37 days of planned turnaround maintenance work on September 7, but are now set to undergo maintenance beginning January 8, 2009.

The previously planned turnaround in CD2A and Feed Cracker 2 remains scheduled to begin on January 8. Thermal Cracker 1, which is generally used as a backup unit, will be transformed into a crude distiller to replace the offline crude unit. Thermal crackers are often transformed into crude distillation units when problems arise in crude units or when there is a need to increase crude-processing rates. Minor modifications to Thermal Cracker 1, in order for it to run as a crude distillation unit, have been performed. The unit is composed of two sections, each of them with a 3,500-BBL/d processing capacity. CD2A and Feed Cracker 2 are set to be restarted on February 13, 2009. By that time, Thermal Cracker 1 will be shut down and converted again to remain on standby mode.

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