BPCL to Shut Bina Refinery for a Month

Bharat Petroleum Corp plans to fully shut its 120,000 barrels per day Bina refinery in central India for up to a month in September and October for maintenance, its head of refineries B.K. Datta said on Monday.

Bina refinery has only one crude oil unit. During the shutdown, the refiner will carry out maintenance at the plant's secondary units as well.

Precise dates for the shutdown have not been decided yet.

The Bina plant is operated by Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd (BORL), majority owned by BPCL. Oman Oil Co owns a small stake in BORL.

Separately, BPCL will restart a 90,000 bpd crude unit at its Kochi refinery by the weekend, Datta said.

"This is a small shutdown of seven to 10 days of a crude unit. This is for a hook-up job to avoid any major shutdown at the time of expansion," Datta told Reuters. The unit was shut over the weekend.

BPCL aims to raise the capacity of the Kochi refinery in southern India to 310,000 bpd from the current 190,000 bpd by end-2015.

Datta also said the refiner will shut a catalytic reformer at Kochi in December. He did not elaborate.

The catalytic reformer has an annual capacity of 0.85 million tonnes.

Sources separately said the catalytic reformer at Kochi will be shut for about 20 days in December.

They also said BPCL could shut a fluidised catalytic cracker for seven to 10 days at Kochi from next week because of a shortage of feedstock.

BPCL also operates a 240,000 bpd refinery at Mumbai in western India and has a majority stake in the 60,000 bpd Numaligarh refinery in northeast India.

Copyright: Thomson Reuters 2014