Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 4 -- Vietnam has asked general contractor Technip to deal swiftly with the breakdown at the country’s first refinery at Dung Quat so that operations can resume as soon as possible.
Operations at the 140,000-b/d plant were suspended on Aug. 16 for about 20 days due to a "technical repair" in the refinery's residue fluid catalytic cracking unit, according to a Petrovietnam official.
"There was a problem at the RFCC unit and repairs should take about 20 days, which means the plant will resume operation by Sept. 9 or 10," said a Petrovietnam official, who declined to be identified.
At the time, Technip director S.K. Singh said the consortium was working with suppliers and technical experts to determine the causes of the problem and find solutions so the refinery could resume operations.
The Dung Quat plant produced a combined 437,000 tons of products from the start of its trial run in April 2008 through Aug. 15.
In March, Vietnam's Petrovietnam Gas Corp., keen to reduce the nation's expenditures on imports, began construction of an LPG depot and a tank truck station at the Dung Quat facility.
The project, valued at 226.6 billion dongs ($13.32 million), includes two 1,000-tonne LPG rundown tanks, a system to deliver LPG from the rundown tanks to tank trucks, a firefighting system, and an industrial pipeline system (OGJ Online, Mar. 18, 2009).
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].
Photos from Repsol SA.
Photo from Parkland Corp.
