World
Petroleumworld
Bookstore
Institutional
links
OPEC
Petroleumworld
Business Partners
THE FORUMBlogspots
recomended
Le Blog des
Energies Nouvelles
  |
|
Curacao PDVSA Isla refinery start-up moving forward - union
WILLEMSTAD
Petroleumworld.com, Aug 31, 2010Several minor units of Curacao's 335,000 barrel per day Isla refinery have restarted after being paralysed for months, but the key catalytic cracker will not start for several weeks, a union leader said.
The facility has been out of action for five months because of recurrent problems at the nearby utility plant that supplies it with water, electricity and steam.
Angelo Meier, leader of the union at the refinery, told Reuters the refinery would be operating normally by October if several boilers at the utility plant were repaired on time.
"The next plant on the list is the largest, the cat cracker, which is forecast to be working by the end of September or before," he said.
"For that to happen a boiler being repaired at the utility plant must return to service."
Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA has run the Curacao-owned Isla refinery since 1985. Last year, a Curacao court ruled that PDVSA must upgrade the aging facility to meet air quality standards.
PDVSA has in the past said it would like to buy Isla, which is built on the site of an old slave market on the island of 150,000 people 40 miles off the Venezuelan coast.
The Isla plant represent more than 10 percent of the global capacity for PDVSA's worldwide refinery network.
A massive tank depot next to the Curacao refinery site, which can hold up to 16 million barrels of crude oil, has become a key staging point for Venezuelan crude oil shipments to China.
The utility plant, run by the Curacao government and Japan 's Marubeni [8002.T], has faced months of technical problems and analysts have said it requires an extensive overhaul of much of its equipment.
Isla was already in bad shape before its current problems, with sporadic outages caused by power failures throughout much of last year.
The government is negotiating with Marubeni to buy the Japanese company's shares in the plant before starting a proposed overhaul of the refinery to reduce pollution and increase the quality of its oil, Meier said.
"We hope the government of Curacao does this so the Isla Refinery can send its products to the U.S. and European markets."
Story by Irasi Jimenez from Reuters
Reuters 08/29/2010
Send this story to a friend
Copyright© 1999-2009 Petroleumworld or respective author or news agency. All rights reserved.
We welcome the use of Petroleumworld™ stories by anyone provided it mentions Petroleumworld.com as the source. Other stories you have to get authorization by its authors.Internet web links to http://www.petroleumworld.com are appreciatedPetroleumworld welcomes your feedback and comments,
share your thoughts on this article, your feedback is important to us!We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
By using this link, you agree to allow PW
to publish your comments on our letters page.
Any question or suggestions, please write to: editor@petroleumworld.comBest Viewed with IE 5.01+ Windows NT 4.0, '95,
'98,ME,XP, Vista, Windows 7+/ 800x600 pixels