Petroplus Coryton Gasoline Unit Shut for Maintenance

By Nidaa Bakhsh

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Petroplus Holdings AG, Europe's largest independent oil refiner by capacity, is carrying out maintenance on a gasoline-making unit at its Coryton plant in the U.K. after a power failure last month.

Work is under way on the refinery's fluid catalytic cracker and associated units following a July 19 power cut, Chief Executive Officer Robert Lavinia said today in an earnings statement. Lavinia expects the cracker, which processes gasoil into lighter refined products, to resume operations in mid- August.

Maintenance at the unit had been scheduled for the first quarter of 2009 and will now be postponed until the third quarter because some equipment inspections can be carried out during the current shutdown, Lavinia said.

The Coryton refinery can process 172,000 barrels of oil a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Petroplus's 110,000 barrel-a-day BRC Antwerp refinery in Belgium is running at close to 65 percent of capacity after scheduled and unplanned maintenance, Lavinia said. Operating rates will be increased next week, he said.

The plant had been idled in the middle of the second quarter for a month of maintenance, Lavinia said. On July 9, a fire in a visbreaker caused minor damage to adjacent units resulting in the processing units remaining shut into the third quarter, he said. A visbreaker increases the amount of diesel and heating oil that can be processed from a barrel of crude.

``There are no other planned major maintenance projects for the remainder of 2008,'' Lavinia said in the statement.

Cressier Refinery

Petroplus said in a presentation on its Web site that it will shut its 68,000 barrel-a-day Cressier refinery in Switzerland for up to a month next year to carry out planned maintenance.

In 2010, Petroplus will perform maintenance for 35 to 40 days at its refineries in Ingolstadt, Germany, Petit Couronne in France, and Teesside in the U.K. and will shut its Reichstett facility in France for up to 45 days during the year. The four plants have a total combined processing capacity of 446,000 barrels of oil a day, according to Bloomberg data.

Petroplus completed the purchase of the two French refineries from Royal Dutch Shell Plc in April.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nidaa Bakhsh in London at nbakhsh@bloomberg.net