PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery Experiencing Another Power Outage

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Researched by Industrial Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Willemstad Island refinery, operated by Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA in Curacao, experienced another power outage today, April 14, 2008. All of the refinery's steam and cooling systems have been taken offline, delaying the restart of the facility's 24 processing units. The refinery experienced another power outage on April 9, 2009.

The refinery, which has a maximum processing capacity of 320,000 barrels per day (BBL/d), usually processes 240,000 BBL/d because the middle conversion and treatment units cannot handle high production levels. When the first power outage occurred, the refinery was processing 201,000 BBL/d. After the first outage power was restored about 14 hours after the electrical problem occurred; however, the processing units remained offline because of the lack of necessary steam and cooling systems.

The April 9 outage occurred as several units from the HDX Complex were reaching normal production rates after a 50-day planned maintenance shutdown. The turnaround began on February 8, 2008, and involved eight units: naphtha hydrotreater, mild hydrocracker, lubes hydrotreatment, polymerization plant, platforming and diesel hydrotreatment. The reformer unit had to be shut down a week before the turnaround start date because of a boiler problem. For more details, view related April 10, 2008, article - Power Outage Forces All Units Offline at PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery.

After the first outage, plant officials were able to restart Feed Crack 2, Thermal Cracker 2, CD3, CD2 B and HV7 at minimum rates. The cat cracker, in which maintenance work had to be performed because of a problem in the outlet of the air blower, was expected to be restarted today but it remained offline because of the second outage. After the initial power problem, plant officials had planned the restart process to enable the refinery to reach the initially planned 205,000 BBL/d production by the end of April 2008.

Although no details were provided, the refinery is expected to take no less than 30 hours to have its utilities functional in order to enable the restart of the processing units.

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