Repairs remain under way on a damaged hydrogen production unit at Neste Oil Corp.’s 205,000-b/d Porvoo refinery in the Kilpilahti Industrial Area, about 20 miles east of Helsinki, Finland.
While repair work on the unit should be completed by the end of October, the unit’s shuttering on Aug. 18 has resulted in the shutdown of the refinery’s diesel-producing Production Line 4 (PL-4), Neste Oil said.
The hydrogen-producing unit, which is one of two at the Porvoo refinery, was taken offline on Aug. 18 following the discovery of unidentified damage (OGJ Online, Aug. 18, 2014).
The company said it expects the entire incident to impact its operating profit for 2014 by about $79 million. This includes about $13 million in repair costs and $66 million in production losses from the shuttering of PL-4, which has a nameplate diesel-production capacity of about 20,000-b/d, according to Neste Oil’s web site.
Prior to the Aug. 18 shutdown of the damaged unit, Neste Oil had let a contract to Linde Group, Munich, for the construction of a hydrogen production plant at the refinery to replace the older of Porvoo’s two existing hydrogen units (OGJ Online, Apr. 28, 2014).
Construction work on the $139 million project was to start immediately, with the hydrogen unit scheduled to be commissioned in summer 2016.
