Several Units Offline at PDVSA's Paraguana Refining Complex Due to Power Outages

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--All of the processing units at PDVSA's Amuay refinery, which is part of the Paraguana Refining Center (Centro de Refinacion Paraguana), went offline on the January 12, 2008, after a power problem that shut down several of the plant's units. The Paraguana center is one of the largest refining centers in Falcon State, Venezuela. The country's state-owned oil company implemented the security protocol in order to prevent further inconveniences. As of January 15, 2008, the Amuay refinery is processing 243,000 barrels per day with six of its 29 processing units online; the remaining units were expected to be restarted by January 17, 2008.

At PDVSA's 295-barrel-per-day Cardon refinery, six of the 30 units are still offline because of the lack of steam supply due to an outage caused by a failure in Venezuela's interconnected power grid. The F101 boiler under maintenance came online on January 14, 2008, and it is providing steam to other online units at the plant. MTBE, TAME, SRU 1 and 2 and Kerosene hydrotreatment are expected to be restarted after the second boiler under maintenance is restarted on February 7, 2008.

The fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU), which remained offline until December 18, 2007, because the unit's compressor was damaged during a previous restart attempt, is now running at normal rates; however, since Cardon's steam boilers were affected along with the FCCU, the alkylation, MTBE, TAME, SRU 1 and 2 and kerosene hydrotreatment units remain offline. For more details, view January 11, 2008, article - Six Units at Cardon Refinery Still Down after December Outage.

The FCCU and alkylation 1 unit expansions previously planned to begin on January 15, 2008, have been postponed until the first week of April because of the lack of supplies. The expansions involve expanding the FCCU's 11,000-ton-per-day capacity to 12,800 tons per day, as well as expanding the 1,500-ton-per-day alkylation 1 unit to 2,400 tons per day. During the four-month expansion turnaround, LPG, flare, propane-propylene, diethanol amine and salt water lines 4 and 5 will be shut down for 30 mechanical days; however, these units will remain offline until the FCCU and alkylation units are online.

Alkylation 1, which has been offline since early December 2007 because of the lack of steam, will remain offline until maintenance and expansion work begins as scheduled on February 15, 2008. Alkylation 1 will also remain offline until the expansion in both units is completed. As of January 15, 2007, the Cardon refinery was processing 283,000 barrels per day with 24 of its 30 processing units processing at normal rates.

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