Refining news weekend catchup: Europe and The Americas

Germany

Shell is going to shut down part of the Godorf-Rheinlan refinery in September for maintenance. The 195 000 bpd plant will reportedly have portions offline for the entire month with 115 000 bpd of capacity being out of action from 1 – 24 September.

Mexico

On Friday 8 August, a fire broke out at the Pemex owned Ciudad Madero refinery. The blaze was reportedly due to maintenance work being carried out on the facility’s coking plant. The refinery’s installations have reportedly not been damaged however it was reported by Pemex on its Twitter feed that two people had died from injuries as a result of the incident and 11 injured.

On Sunday 10 August it was reported that the death toll at the Pemex refinery had increased to three. Eight workers injured by the fire were also reported as still being in hospital.

UK

Hydrocarbons thieves have targeted a pipeline that takes fuel from the Fawley refinery in Hampshire to the Purfleet Fuel Terminal at Gatwick airport. The 120 mile pipeline shows signs of siphoning and police have now launched an investigation. The theft was apparently committed near the official country residence of Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister. It is thought that approximately 30 000 ltrs/d of fuel has been stolen over the last seven months which has an at the pump value of approximately £ 8.3 million.

USA

Towards the end of last week it was reported that the two refineries in Hawaii were planning to stay open over the weekend despite the arrival of Hurricane Iselle being imminent. Non-operational staff were reportedly told to stay home from work at the Hawaii Independent Energy plant and said it would play the rest of the Hurricane period by ear. Chevron who own the other refinery in Hawaii were also reportedly playing the storm by ear but keeping the plant open until more was known about Iselle’s severity.

Calumet Speciality Products are looking to construct a new refinery in North Dakota. Commissioning of the facility is expected to start in the fourth quarter of this year and the plant will have a processing capacity of 20 000 bpd, 8000 bpd of which is expected to be diesel and 6000 of atmospheric tower bottoms. The other 6000 bpd is expected to comprise of naphtha. The plant is a joint venture with MDU Resources Inc.

The environmental clean up of the Mount Pleasant refinery in Titus County went to a new level last week with the implosion of the thermoform catalytic converter. The 350 ft tower rising caused reverberations late in to the afternoon and emergency personnel were on site in case any problems arose. The refinery was originally shuttered in 1984 with tanks and terminals being sold off. The refinery equipment and property was purchased by the Trey Corporation and between 1995 and 2003 there were several citations from the EPA against the release of hazardous substances from the site. Following this the site was referred to the EPA Superfund for investigation and cleanup.

Sources: NDTV, Biz Journals, Prairie Business, Daily Tribune, Southern Daily Echo, Reuters, Business Recorder.

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/11082014/refining-weekend-news-11-aug/