By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, Mar. 19 -- Valero Energy Corp. made an early start of the scheduled April turnaround of its 160,000 b/d Texas City, Tex., refinery after a problem with a utility company's electric power transformer forced an emergency shutdown earlier this month.
That unit was forced to shut down Mar. 6 when a Texas New Mexico Power Co. transformer lost power. But when refinery workers subsequently attempted to bring it back online, they experienced problems with the plant's electrostatic recipitator (ESP).
"Late last week, we received an Emergency Order from the TNRCC (Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission), which would have allowed us to operate the refinery without the ESP for a brief period of time as we prepared for our scheduled turnaround," a company representative said Monday.
"Unfortunately, we experienced greater damage to the fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) unit than had been originally estimated, and it will not be possible to bring the FCC unit up prior to (turnaround) after all," she said.
The Valero spokeswoman said the 55,000 b/d FCCU originally was scheduled for a 44-day turnaround. However, she said, "It is estimated that going into turnaround early may extend it by 10 days or more."
The 30-day turnaround of the refinery's 7,000 b/d alkylation unit and the 22-day turnaround of its 90,000 b/d residfiner will also take place during the same period.
Valero earlier reported it finished repairs on an methyl tertiary butyl ether unit at its Corpus Christi refinery, but the MTBE unit was running at reduced rates because of a shortage of feedstock.