Sines Refinery Completes Shutdown to Perform Maintenance Work

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Galp Energia SGPS S.A.'s (ELI:GALP) (Lisbon, Portugal) Sines Refinery (Sines, Portugal), which has a processing capacity of 225,000 barrels per day (BBL/d), began a refinery overhaul on September 15. All the units at the refinery are completely shut down for the maintenance.

The maintenance shutdown began on September 6. The light products units such as the 27,500-BBL/d platforming unit and 10,200-BBL/d hydrocracker were the first ones to go offline. The remaining units were shut down in sequence; the atmospheric distillation unit was the last to be shut down. The maintenance work is to last approximately 25 days in the Fabrica I Area, which includes crude, platforming, Vacuum Distillation II, hydrocracking and other units. The Fabrica II Area, which includes the fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) and visbreaker, will end its maintenance work within 33 days and is scheduled to resume operations by October 17.

The overhaul is part of the four-year planned maintenance shutdown; they will add a new reactor to the FCCU to improve the refinery efficiency. During the overhaul workers will also prepare the refinery for the conversion units on which Sines Refinery is working. They will perform a revamp on the atmospheric distillation unit to process heavy crude. Workers will also add a new sour water treatment, hydrocracker, steam reformer (hydrogen production), deisobutanizer, liquefied-petroleum-gas splitter and a sulfur recovery unit. Detailed engineering of the units is being carried out by the Spanish company Tecnicas Reunidas S.A. (MCE:TRE) (Madrid, Spain). The construction of these units will begin in November and is scheduled to end by January 2011.

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