April 26, 2012:

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd will restart on Thursday one of the three crude units at its 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) southern India refinery, which was shut last week due to water shortages, its managing director said. "We have started a CCR (continuous catalyst reformer) and CDU (crude distillation unit)-II is under start-up. It will be commissioned today," U.K. Basu told Reuters. A regional court on Wednesday directed local authorities to supply 2 million gallons per day of water to MRPL, he said, adding the authorities have assured restoration of full water supplies in "days to come".

State-run MRPL has delayed oil product shipments by one to two weeks due to the refinery shutdown. Basu said the hydrogen unit and one hydrocracker are under commissioning and would be started in 2 days followed by a diesel hydro-desulphurisation unit. "Units will be started one by one," he added. MRPL has three crude units -- Phase I of about 93,600 bpd, Phase II of about 142,800 bpd and Phase III of about 60,000 bpd -- and supplies oil products mostly in southern India.

He said CDU III would resume operations in a week's time as the company has to build water stocks, while start up of CDU I is linked to a 1.2 million tonne a year hydrocracker units, which was shut in the second week of April for 45 days maintenance.

By Reuters