Several Units Remain Offline after Power Outage at PDVSA Refinery in Curacao

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--A power failure on December 3, 2007, at the Willemstad Isla refinery, operated by Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA in Curacao, brought about the complete shutdown of all the processing units for 24 hours. As of December 7, 2007, six of the 34 units were still down.

The refinery has been producing 240,000 barrels per day because the middle conversion and treatment units cannot handle high production levels. The plant is composed of 34 processing units. Thermal Cracker 1 has been offline because of feed stock programming since mid-August 2007. Thermal Cracker 2, which is running at normal rates, will be shut down in October 2008. For more details, see related November 27, 2007, article - PDVSA Refinery in Curacao Running at Reduced Capacity.

After the power outage, a problem emerged when trying to restart the cat cracker. The generator had to be opened, and work is ongoing. The cat cracker, alkylation and Crude 2A are still offline and are scheduled to be restarted on December 15, 2007. After the FCCU is online, SRU 1 and 2, which are also offline because of feedstock programming, will be restarted, as well. A planned maintenance shutdown in SRU 3 was being performed at the time of the outage, and maintenance work has already been completed. The unit was expected to be restarted during the weekend. All other units are online and processing normally.

There are no planned maintenance shutdowns in January 2008 at the plant. In the third week of February 2008, a planned maintenance shutdown is scheduled in platforming. There are no turnarounds scheduled in February and March 2008.

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