Series of Maintenance Turnarounds Planned at Chile's Bio Bio Refinery in 2009

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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 performing a planned maintenance turnaround on its 13,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) delayed coker unit.

The 20-day maintenance on the unit began on January 5. Change of catalyst and furnace decoking is being performed, and the unit is expected to be restarted on January 25. Sulfur Recovery 2, Sour Water 2 and MDEA 2 are also offline. Maintenance work on these units will be performed in the coming days, and they will be restarted on January 11. After the delayed coker is back online, a three-day maintenance turnaround will be performed on the 13,800-BBL/d continuous catalytic reformer (CCR) to clean its compressor. Hydrocracking 1 and 2 will remain processing at minimum rates until the CCR is back online.

In May, a 25-day maintenance turnaround will be performed in the 50,300-BBL/d Topping 1, 10,700-BBL/d Hydrocracking 2 and ethylene units. In August, the 15,000-BBL/d Hydrocracking 1 and Hydrogen 2 will be shut down for maintenance. As of January 7, the refinery is processing 16,000 cubic meters per day. The refinery's remaining units are online.

Enap has three refineries in the country: Aconcagua, Gregorio and Bio Bio. The latter has a total production capacity of 113,000 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.

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