Caltex Australia Shuts Queensland Refinery on Fault

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Caltex Australia Ltd., the nation’s biggest oil refiner, shut down its Lytton refinery near Brisbane after a failure of the plant’s steam system, potentially disrupting fuel supplies in Queensland state.

The company can’t yet estimate how long the shutdown will last, Frank Topham, public affairs manager for the Sydney-based refiner, said by telephone. It’s too early to assess any damage at the plant and the company is still studying how the stoppage will affect deliveries to customers, he said.

Unplanned closures at Caltex Australia’s two refineries contributed to a 13 percent drop in its first-half output of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Lytton is the smaller of the two plants, which have a combined processing capacity of 230,000 barrels a day.

“This will potentially have an impact on petrol supply,” Topham said by telephone. “There was already a shortage of diesel at our terminal at Brisbane, due to an unrelated problem. Whether this will have an additional impact on diesel supply is something we’ll have to assess. Of course there are inventories throughout the supply chain.”

Lytton, the largest refinery in Queensland state, started operating in 1965 and produces 17 million liters a day of fuel. About 45 percent of its output is gasoline, 35 percent diesel, 13 percent jet fuel and the rest fuel oil and other products, according to the company’s Web site.

Shell Shutdown

The plant shutdown comes after Royal Dutch Shell Plc closed down its refinery near Sydney at the end of last month for work to address unplanned outages that have disrupted production over the past 12 months.

Caltex Australia was forced to shut down the Lytton plant after the pumps that supply water to the boilers stopped working, halting the supply of steam, Topham said. The incident, in which no-one was injured, created some black smoke and possibly a “brief flash of flame.” There was no fire, he said.

Caltex Australia doesn’t yet know what caused the pumps to stop operating, Topham said.

Firefighters were called to the site after reports of a fire, Queensland’s Department of Emergency Services said. The plant had been shut down and the situation brought under control before the fire and rescue personnel arrived, the department said in a statement on its Web site. About 700-800 people were evacuated from the site, it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net