Petroplus Shuts Coryton Refinery After Disruption

By Aaron Clark and Robert Tuttle

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Petroplus Holdings AG, Europe's largest independent oil refiner by capacity, said it shut the Coryton refinery in England after an operational disruption.

The plant was shut down safely, affected areas were evacuated and no one was injured, said a refinery official who declined to give his name. The plant is in the preliminary process of restarting, the official said.

The incident happened at 4:51 p.m. today, when steam was pumped into a naphtha unit boiler, causing the boiler to malfunction, the Essex County Fire & Rescue Service said in a press release. Fire crews responded to the incident.

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

Thirty-six percent of the refinery's output is gasoline and 27 percent is diesel, according to AA, the U.K.'s biggest motoring club. About 80 percent of the gasoline produced is delivered to U.K. filling stations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Clark in New York at aclark27@bloomberg.netRobert Tuttle in New York at rtuttle@bloomberg.net