Report

Subject:                 Various - Refinery News    

Date of Email report:   Mon 27/04/200

Report Detail:

USA - Alon said on Thursday production at its 53,000-barrel-per-day
(bpd) refinery in Paramount, California, was reduced following an explosion in a hydrotreater heater Wednesday night. One worker was slightly injured in the explosion, Alon said in a statement. He was treated and released from a local hospital. The Paramount refinery calls itself a major producer of a paving and roofing asphalt, according to a company website. Alon purchased the refinery in 2006 and paired it up with a 35,000 bpd refinery in Edgington, California, also bought in 2006. Only the hydrotreater heater was damaged in the explosion, Alon said. The refinery was planning repairs to the damaged area. About 30 percent of the refinery's output is asphalt while 25 percent is gas oil, according to Paramount. Another 16 percent of output is gasoline feedstock with diesel fuel equaling the same amount. Ten percent is jet fuel. Both gasoline and jet fuel were up 0.5 cent in Thursday trade on the Los Angeles wholesale refined products market.Paramount is located about 15 miles (24 km) south of downtown Los Angeles. (Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

Yemen - A fire blazed Thursday afternoon in a factory for storing oils in the Shamlan area, on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sana’a.
Security authorities have immediately embarked on investigating the incident to discover the cause of the fire. Management from Civil Defense operations told almotamar.net that firefighting teams controlled the fire that erupted around 3:30pm, after the fire destroyed contents of the oil refinery due to difficulties faced by fire engines stemming from the ruggedness of the area where the factory is located. The large columns of smoke caused by the fire also delayed extinguishing efforts inside the factory. Civil Defense authorities added that firefighting teams were able to stop the fire from spreading to stores and barrels of oil as well as equipment located beside the factory. Civil Defense clarified that preliminary investigations indicate the cause to be leakage of oils at a flammable site in the factory, without safety measures. It added that security authorities in the area received a file of the incident and began further investigations into the cause of the fire. There were no casualties in the incident.

Iraq - Thick clouds of black smoke filled the skies as far south as Tikrit on Monday after a massive fire started near the Baiji oil refinery complex, one of Iraq's largest. An official with the North Refineries Company, which operates the refinery at Baiji told the Kurdish AKA news agency that the fire began in an area used to burn waste from the industrial complex's five refineries.  The company official ruled out the possibility of sabotage, but said the refinery was operating at its capacity of 350,000 barrels of oil a day, or about a third of Iraq's total refinery capacity. Baiji, some 200 kilometres north of Baghdad and 40 kilometres north of Tikrit, is the largest oil refinery in Iraq's Sunni heartland. Four refineries in the industrial park, which was built in 1982 with cooperation from international oil companies, refine oil. A fifth produces asphalt and other petroleum derivatives

Kuwait - A limited fire erupted at a liquefied gas unit at Kuwait's 460,000 barrels per day Mina Al-Ahmadi oil refinery on Sunday, without affecting refining or export operations, the state oil refiner said. The fire, which broke out at dawn was extinguished and controlled in less than an hour, a spokesman for Kuwait National Petroleum Company told Reuters. The fire did not affect the plant's export and refining operations or supplies to the local market, he said.KNPC runs the Opec exporter's oil refineries which frequently report similar incidents.
Ahmadi is the largest of three oil refineries in the Gulf Arab state, the world's seventh-largest oil exporter.-

Venezuala - Officials say a fire broke out at Venezuela's largest oil refinery, but firefighters quickly controlled the blaze and production was not hurt. Jesus Luongo is manager of the Paraguana refining complex in the western state of Falcon. He says the fire broke out Tuesday along a pipeline inside the refinery. Luongo told state television there were no injuries. Authorities are investigating. The Paraguana complex refines about 940,000 barrels of oil a day. Venezuela is a major supplier of crude to the United States.

India - Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd on Friday said it had contained a minor fire that broke out in the cooling tower of its refinery. "There was a minor fire in the cooling tower of phase 1 of the refinery ... which was put out by the fire tender at MRPL," the company said in a statement. It added that the refinery operations were unaffected by the fire. MRPL, a subsidiary of state-run exploration firm Oil and Natural Gas Corp, runs a 194,000 bpd coastal refinery in Karnataka.

USA - Over 80 responders, from Ingleside and surrounding communities were kept busy throughout the night, as they monitored a blaze which broke out at the Flint Hills Resources' terminal a little after 9:30 Tuesday night. The fire broke out in one of the terminals crude oil tanks. Flint Hills officials think a pump failure sparked the blaze.
One of those first responders, Lt. Gillian Cox, with the Ingleside Volunteer Fire Department shot footage of the fire when it first erupted. Fortunately no injuries were reported. Refinery officials credit their training and readiness in minimizing any fire danger to that lone tanker. Rich Tuttle of Flint Hills Resources, says, " We work very hard to be safe, and to operate safely. We have mechanical integrated programs but from time to time, things happen, and the main thing is we responded very quickly to minimize the damage." Fire officials allowed the blaze burn itself out throughout the night.
T.C.E.Q. and the Environmental Protection Agency have been notified of the incident.Over 80 responders were on the scene to fight flames, including units from Aransas Pass, Rockport, and Naval Station Ingleside, were just 3 of the units

Italy - Italy's biggest oil and natural gas company by volumes, restarted Sunday production at a coking unit in the Sicilian Gela refinery after a fire, an official said Monday.  There were no injuries and very slight damage to some lines in Saturday's fire, the official said. Eni staff put out the fire, caused by a leakage from a diesel pump, without the need for assistance from emergency services.  The Gela refinery has an annual capacity of about 1.5 million metric tons, he said. The refinery, on the southern Sicilian coast, had completed a few days ago a planned maintenance that lasted about 20 days, the official said.

Nigeria - Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) on Sunday said it shut down flow stations to its 150,000 barrels-a-day Trans-Niger pipeline following a fire, the latest disruptive incident in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
Pictures obtained by Dow Jones Newswires and taken earlier Sunday show a large column of black smoke rising to the sky and several points of fire coming out of green pipes and taps at the manifold. A Shell spokesman said its Shell Petroleum Development Co., or SPDC, joint venture shut flow stations feeding the pipeline "as a precautionary measure" after a fire "due to unknown causes" at a manifold in South-Eastern Nigeria's Ogoniland. Oil facilities in the Niger Delta are frequently disrupted by crude theft, sabotage or spills due to an aging infrastructure. The community of K. Dere, where the fire took place, has suffered from numerous fires tied to oil theft, the most recently disclosed late December. But SPDC has also previously said it was no longer able to fully maintain the part of the Trans-Niger pipeline going through Ogoni, after local opposition forced it to stop producing there in 1993. The execution of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 deepened the hostility of the population. The fire in Ogoni comes as SPDC Monday had to interrupt flows from Soku, a major gas and condensate plant, just eight days after it came online from a previous, four-month shutdown. Around one quarter of Nigeria's effective pumping capacity, or around 600,000 barrels a day, is currently shut because of militant attacks and other disruptions. Much of that production is operated by SPDC, a Shell-run government joint venture. Recent attacks have also hit the operations of U.S.-based Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Italy's Eni SpA (E).

 
Mexico - Veracruz Three employees of state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos were killed when an electricity pylon collapsed on them inside a refinery complex in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, authorities said Friday.  Veracruz civil defense chief Ranulfo Marquez Hernandez told Efe that a fourth worker was injured in the accident at Pemex’s Lazaro Cardenas refinery in Minatitlan. The tragedy occurred around 9:30 p.m.
Thursday, when a crane snagged a high-tension line, causing one of the pylons to collapse on the three workers, who had finished their shifts and were waiting for a bus at the time of the accident. The crane operator was also hurt and was admitted to a Pemex-run hospital in Minatitlan, where he is listed in stable condition. Pemex says that so far this year, nine employees have suffered work-related injuries at the Lazaro Cardenas refinery, which processes 169,000 barrels per day of crude and supplies fuel to much of southern Mexico. An ongoing $2.3 billion renovation is expected to boost the refinery’s capacity to 320,000 bpd.
In recent years, Pemex, Mexico’s biggest company and the world’s No. 3 producer of crude oil, has experienced a string of accidents that have claimed dozens of lives and resulted in significant environmental harm.
EFE

USA - A unionized worker at Exxon Mobil's (XOM) refinery in Torrance, Calif., was burned while doing work at a coking unit Saturday, a person familiar with refining operations said Tuesday. The company confirmed that a worker was being treated for burns. The man, a member of the United Steel Workers union, was burned on more than 80% of his body and remains hospitalized, the person said. The worker was performing everyday maintenance on the unit, the person also said. Carolin Keith, a spokeswoman for the Exxon refinery, confirmed the incident and said the worker was being treated at the burn unit at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. "We are very concerned about this individual," said Keith, who declined to discuss how the worker was burned. Erika Monterroza, a spokeswoman with California's department of industrial relations, said the agency has opened an investigation in Saturday's 11:10 a.m. PDT incident. The refinery, which has a capacity of 149,500 barrels a day, is not in a "planned maintenance cycle," Keith said

USA - The man injured in a gas well blowout on a drilling rig Thursday night is stable and expected to make a full recovery, according to a company spokeswoman. Matthew Martin, 29, was employed by The Wood Group, an oilfield services company that was contracted by Chesapeake Energy to help complete their wells.  Bobbie Ireland, The Wood Group’s director of corporate communications, said the blowout happened when Martin was testing the completion of the new well, located on Williams Road in Keithville. He suffered a knee injury and some burns, according to Ireland. The accident occurred about 7:20 p.m. Thursday. “He’s going to be all right,” she said. “They’re letting him talk on a cell phone. His family has been reached, and his wife is flying in today.”Martin is from Wyoming. Chesapeake and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources are investigating the cause of the accident. Kevin McCotter, Chesapeake’ s director of corporate development for this area, said the results of their investigation should be available in a few days.

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