HOUSTON: Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to restart the small crude distillation unit (CDU) at its 227,586 barrel-per-day (bpd) Convent, Louisiana, refinery by Thursday after completing repairs, sources familiar with plant operations said on Tuesday.
"Maintenance is underway on a process unit at the Shell Convent refinery," said Shell spokesman Ray Fisher. He declined to identify the unit.
The 100,000-bpd VPS-2 CDU was shut on Friday to repair a leak, which was fixed on Monday, the sources said. Work is now underway to correct a heat exchanger malfunction on the crude unit.
Shell is also repairing a catalytic reformer at its 225,800 bpd Norco, Louisiana, refinery, sources familiar with Shell's operations said on Tuesday.
The 40,000 bpd Catalytic Reformer-2 was shut on Aug. 4 by a flange fire, the sources said.
Shell last year announced plans to link the Norco and Convent refineries together by pipelines and operate them as one plant. The plan had been under consideration since at least 2014.
Major work in preparation for the combination is scheduled to take place next year at the Convent refinery, including permanently shutting the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit.
CDUs do the initial refining of crude oil in a refinery, providing feedstock to all other units.
Reformers convert low-octane naphthas into octane-boosting blending components of gasoline.
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