Preem advances Lysekil refinery restart, VDU project

Jan. 15, 2019
Swedish refiner Preem AB, a wholly owned subsidiary of Corral Petroleum Holdings AB, Stockholm, has restarted the bulk of operations 228,900-b/d at its refinery at Lysekil, Sweden, following a late December 2018 production disruption caused by an electrical power failure.

Swedish refiner Preem AB, a wholly owned subsidiary of Corral Petroleum Holdings AB, Stockholm, has restarted the bulk of operations 228,900-b/d at its refinery at Lysekil, Sweden, following a late December 2018 production disruption caused by an electrical power failure.

As of Jan. 15, the refinery was back at near-to-full capacity except for one unidentified unit, where a reactor is undergoing mechanical repairs, Preem said.

Other units at the site were restarted immediately in the wake of the electrical outage, the operator said.

Further details regarding the incident or its impact to production at the site were not disclosed.

The company did not reveal a timeframe for restart of the unidentified unit still under maintenance.

Preem, however, continues to progress with its previously announced plan to expand vacuum distillation capacity at the Lysekil refinery with a project adding a second vacuum distillation unit (VDU) to supplement the refinery’s existing 64,600-b/d VDU to increase the plant’s production of vacuum gas oil and eliminate monthly VGO import requirements of about 50,000 cu m (OGJ Online, Aug. 23, 2017).

In a Nov. 28, 2018, presentation to investors, Preem said the 1.7 billion-kronor VDU project reached mechanical completion in fourth-quarter 2018 and is scheduled for startup sometime during first-quarter 2019.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].