Rabigh Refinery Resumes Operations After Month-long Shutdown

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (Delhi, India)--Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company (Petro Rabigh) (SAU:2380) (Rabigh, Saudi Arabia) restarted its 400,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Rabigh Refinery on February 2, 2013, after a 34-day shutdown following an outage in the associated power plant. The power outage cut off power and steam supplies to the process unit.

The refinery was ready to commence operations on January 18, 2013, but it was delayed another 15 days due to essential maintenance. Originally, maintenance was scheduled during the second quarter of 2013.

The major units of the refinery that were shutdown during the period included a 400,000-BBL/d crude unit, a 92,000-BBL/d high-olefin fluid catalytic cracker, a 120,000-BBL/d vacuum gas oil hydrotreater and a 47,000-BBL/d diesel hydro-desulfurization unit. Petro Rabigh last shut its entire refinery in April 2011 for 60 days to conduct a planned maintenance on its refinery units.

The Rabigh refinery was commissioned in 1989, with an initial capacity of 325,000 BBL/d. A debottlenecking exercise performed in 1998 resulted in an increase in crude processing capacity to 400,000 BBL/d, making the refinery the largest single train-crude distillation unit in the world.

Petro Rabigh is a 50:50 joint venture between Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) and Sumitomo Chemical Limited (TYO:4005) (Tokyo, Japan). Valued at about $10 billion, the complex comprises 23 units producing more than 18.4 million tons per annum of petroleum-based products and 2.4 million tons per annum of ethylene and propylene-based derivatives.

In January 2008, the company held its initial public offering and issued a 25% stake to the public. Presently, both Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical each hold 37.5% shares in Petro Rabigh.

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