Power Outage Delays Maintenance Turnarounds at PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA has delayed the January 4 planned turnarounds at the 325,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Willemstad Isla refinery in Curacao as a result of a second unexpected power outage that hit the refinery on December 25, 2008.

Prior to that the refinery went offline on December 19 after a power outage. Service was 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. For more details view related December 24 2008, article - PDVSA Restarts Willemstad Isla Refinery after Power Outage.

The refinery had experienced two previous power outages in 2008. 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 the two power outages in April 2008, planned maintenance on the 45,000-BBL/d Crude CD2A and 48,000-BBL/d vacuum unit, also known as Feed Cracker 2, was delayed for four months. These units were scheduled to begin 37 days of planned turnaround maintenance work on September 7, but it was then moved to January 4, 2009.

After the December 25, 2008, power outage, most of the processing units restarted on December 31, except for the 37,000-BBL/d Vacuum HV6, which remains offline because of a leak in the unit's main distillation tower. Once the leak had been repaired, the turnaround was expected to begin on January 10. The 30,000-BBL/d Thermal Cracker 1, which is generally used as a backup unit, has already been converted to a crude distiller for the outage, but is awaiting the restart of the HV6 before it begins operation. 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. The thermal cracker is composed of two sections, each of them with a 3,500-BBL/d processing capacity. The completion of the CD2A, CD2B and Feed Crack planned turnaround is now planned for February 19, 2009. By that time, Thermal Cracker 1 will be shut down and converted again to remain on standby mode.

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