By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, Sept. 19 -- CITGO Petroleum Corp. has begun systematically restarting units at Lemont, Ill., refinery that have been out of service since an Aug. 14 fire in the crude unit.
CITGO operates the 158,650 b/d refinery for PDV Midwest Refining LLC.
Adolph Lechtenberger, CITGO senior vice-president for refining and petrochemicals, said, "Although the crude unit is an integral part of refinery operations, we have devised ways of operating other process units without the crude unit. The catalytic cracking, alkylation, and reformer units are operational and, with the exception of the crude unit, we expect to bring other units up soon. Nothing has changed on the timetable for repairing the crude unit and bringing it back on stream.
"We have been extra cautious during the start-up process to ensure that the units operate safely and environmentally soundly," Lechtenberger said. There were no injuries or reported offsite impacts resulting from the fire (OGJ Online, Aug. 28, 2001).
CITGO, Tulsa, Okla., and PDV Midwest Refining are owned by PDV America Inc., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the Venezuelan national oil company.