Vacuum 3 at Valero's Aruba Refinery Resumes Operation

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE:VLO) (San Antonio, Texas) has resumed operation of the vacuum 3 (V3) unit at the San Nicolas refinery in Aruba. The 160,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) V3 processing unit was forced to go offline after a fire broke out in January. For details, view related February 1, 2008, article - Fire in Vacuum Unit Halts Valero's Aruba Refinery.

After the V3 unit resumed operation, the problem in the current steam generator system was solved, and the D3 unit (heavy gas/oil hydrotreater) began its start-up process. It was scheduled to begin processing by June 4, 2008. The D2 unit (light gas/oil hydrotreater) was scheduled to stay shut down while maintenance is performed on the R2 valve of the compressor, which has not been functioning properly. The turnaround is scheduled to take place by June 7, 2008. After D2 and D3 are both online, the whole refinery will reach a higher production capacity of 230,000 BBL/d. Delayed coker 1 and 2 are processing 30,000 BBL/d each. They are expected to be process up to 37,000 BBL/d by June 7, 2008. The refinery's other processing units are online and running without problems.

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