Refining and petrochemicals news from Asia and Europe

India

Algenol and Reliance Industries have deployed the first Algenol algae biofuel production platform in the country. The module is for demonstration and is near the Jamnagar refinery, the world’s largest oil refining facility. The demonstration has successfully completed several production cycles which has been designed to process 1 t of CO2 into 144 gal. of fuel.

Following a long period of closure, the Haldia Petrochemicals Limited (HPL) plant is now in the process of restarting operations. A trial run of the facility is now anticipated to begin soon. The captive power plant has so far been commissioned as part of the startup activity but will take some days. The plant has been closed since July last year.

Philippines

Port congestion is currently impacting the upgrade of the Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp refinery in the country. The US$100 – 150 million project has been affected by port congestion which was triggered by a truck ban imposed by Manila last year. The completion of the work has reportedly been delayed due to this by one quarter.

Russia

It has been reported that Russian oil refinery runs fell by 2.1% in December lat year month on month. Runs dropped to 123 787 bpd and this has been attributed to a series of outages reported by the Energy Ministry. In December refineries processed a total of 5.862 million bbls of crude across the country while they processed 5.986 million bbls in November 2014.

UK

Total has announced major back to back maintenance projects at its Lindsey oil refinery and expects there to be up to 1000 workers on site at peak work times. The company will be carrying out a dual unit turnaround and inspection project which will see 80% of contractors being employed from the Humber area. Work is officially beginning on 9 February and will focus on the conversion and hydrotreatment units at the plant. Work is expected to finish in March.

Sources: Business Recorder, Grimsby Telegraph, Biofuels Digest, Mail Online, Business Standard.

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/refining/27012015/ref-petchem-news-asia-europe/