August 30, 2019:

Engen Refinery, South Africa’s second largest oil refinery, is set to undergo a planned maintenance Outage. Starting on 2 September 2019, this scheduled activity forms part of the refinery’s ongoing maintenance programme, with 21 days planned for reformer regeneration activities and 63 days for maintenance of the plant’s alkylation unit.  Sykry Hassim, General Manager of the Engen Refinery, explains that routine planned maintenance is essential for the safe and reliable operation of the facility.  “The planned outage will primarily focus on essential plant maintenance and inspection activities in the alkylation unit as well as reformer catalyst regeneration activities,” says Hassim.  Additional resource requirements over this period will see the creation of approximately 1,500 temporary positions for both skilled and unskilled workers, many of whom have been sourced from the local South Durban community.  The Engen Refinery produces approximately 17% of South Africa’s fuel.

By petrolplaza.com

August 30, 2019:

Chevron Corp’s 356,440 barrel-per-day Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery is closely monitoring the progress of Hurricane Dorian, a company spokesman said on Thursday.  Dorian is churning across the Atlantic Ocean toward landfall on the Atlantic coast of Florida over the weekend and may enter into the eastern Gulf of Mexico next week, according to some computer models. “Pascagoula is following hurricane procedures and paying close attention to the track and forecast of the storm,” Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall said in an email.  Refineries in Louisiana were not making preparations on Thursday for the storm, said people familiar with operations at Valero Energy Corp’s Meraux, Louisiana, refinery and PBF Energy Inc’s Chalmette, Louisiana, plant. Royal Dutch Shell Plc refineries in Norco and Convent, Louisiana, had no preparations under way on Thursday, a spokesman said. 

PBF spokesman Michael Karlovich declined to discuss operations at the Chalmette refinery. A Valero spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment.  Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Garyville, Louisiana, refinery did not respond to a request for comment about operations.  Dorian is predicted to have winds reaching 130 mph (209 kph) in 72 hours, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said on Thursday.  That would make it a Category 4 storm, the second-strongest on the Saffir-Simpson scale for measuring hurricane intensity.  Forecast tracks show the hurricane either remaining over land and moving north into Georgia, or entering the Gulf and making a second landfall in either the Florida panhandle, Alabama or Mississippi.  The Gulf Coast is home to more that 45% of U.S. national refining capacity.  The Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 16% of U.S. oil and 3% of natural gas production. Most offshore production platforms are in the central and western areas of the Gulf.

By Reuters

August 30, 2019:

Most of a highly toxic chemical stored at a fire-damaged Philadelphia oil refinery has been rendered inert, clearing the way for closer inspections of the site following a June blaze that led to the plant’s closure, officials said on Friday. About 340,000 pounds of hydrofluoric acid (HF) stored at Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ refinery was chemically neutralized, Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said in a briefing. HF can burn the skin and form a potentially deadly fog at room temperature.  The process “substantially reduces the risk to the community,” Thiel said, noting some HF acid still remained at the site. Initial phases of the fire probes, including data gathering, have largely been completed, Thiel said.  HF is used by more than one-third of U.S. refineries in the alkylation process to make high-octane gasoline. Labor unions and environmentalists have urged that it be replaced, particularly in densely populated areas.  PES’s alkylation unit was destroyed in a fire and series of blasts on June 21 just minutes after the chemical was dumped into a safety vessel.

The HF in that vessel has been neutralized, Thiel said.  Removing the HF will allow investigators, including the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, to physically examine damaged areas of the refinery.  Since the fire, PES has closed the refinery complex, which was the largest and oldest on the East Coast, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Most of the roughly 1,100 PES workers have been laid off without health benefits, including 640 union employees.  PES on Thursday asked the bankruptcy judge to hire investigations and crisis management attorneys to advise the company on the seven federal, state and local investigations into the cause of the June blasts, court documents show.  The refiner has agreed to retain about 80 union employees as a caretaker group until the last of the HF is neutralized. Afterward, the number of workers will be reduced, according to an agreement reached last week, which is subject to bankruptcy court approval. 

The last step in clearing the remaining HF from the plant is expected to begin in mid-November, said Eric Eckenrode of HF alkylation decontamination experts EnvTech, which has been working on the PES project alongside union employees.  “They are all helping us to move this along knowing that once this is complete, and we finish with the unit, then they’re going to be let go themselves,” Eckenrode said.

By Reuters

August 29, 2019:

The investigation theory is that Gennady Lisovichenko sold an approach railroad to the Antipinsky oil refinery at an undervalue, and then took on lease from it, having caused significant damage to the oil refinery. The investigation has clarified accusations of abuse of power (item 1 of article 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) against an ex-CEO of the Antipinsky oil refinery Gennady Lisovichenko, reports the media office of the criminal investigations directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee in the Tyumen region. The investigation theory is that in late October, 2017, Lisovichenko tied a contract with a commercial company. The contract was related to sale of an approach railroad to the Antipinsky oil refinery. The approach railroad is a significant element of the enterprise, as running of oil products goes through it. The contract was worth of around 20 million rubles ($300 thousand) in spite of its market value - 38 million rubles ($570 thousand). This approach railroad was rented by the company. As a result, it caused significant damage to the oil refinery. Lisovichenko was put on an international wanted list. The investigation reported he had been arrested in absentia.

Gennady Lisovichenko became a head of the oil refinery in 2004 and worked at this position till November, 2018. After that, the company’s number one shareholder - Sberbank - appointed new senior executives.  Lisovichenko was one of the founders of the Antipinsky oil refinery. Another founder is Dmitry Mazurov. The latter was detained on suspicion of $29 million swindling in mid-July. Criminal case against Mazurov was initiated upon the application of a head of Sberbank Herman Gref. According to the case file, Mazurov had received a major loan and - along with other parties - used the funds at his sole discretion and did not return the money to the bank. Mazurov has been arrested till September 12.

By crimerussia.com

June 21, 2019:

An orange fireball filled the sky in Philadelphia early Friday after an explosion at an oil refinery in the southwest part of the city. From Pennsylvania to New Jersey, there were reports of homes shaking, as people awoke to a smoke-filled sky and orders to shelter in place. No significant injuries were reported, according to the Philadelphia Fire Department, which was working to put out the fire Friday morning. Firefighters responded to a report of an explosion around 4 a.m. at Philadelphia Energy Solutions, a refining complex near the Schuylkill between the city’s international airport and downtown. The complex includes two refineries, which together can process about 335,000 barrels of crude oil per day. It is the largest oil refining complex on the Eastern Seaboard, according to the company. The Philadelphia Fire Department confirmed that there had been a “smaller fire” at the facility earlier this month, on June 10. A spokeswoman for Philadelphia Energy Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has struggled with debt and emerged from bankruptcy last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. On Friday, officials discovered a fire stemming from a vat of butane, a colorless gas that is highly flammable, according to Craig Murphy, a deputy fire commissioner with the Philadelphia Fire Department, who spoke at a news conference Friday morning. “The fire is not under control yet,” he said. He said one employee had complained of chest pains, but did not need to be taken to a hospital.

Videos on social media showed an enormous fireball lighting up the sky and continuing to burn after daybreak. It could be seen from highways and homes, in a city of more than 1.5 million people. The Philadelphia Fire Department said about 120 employees were on site, working with firefighters from the facility. By about 7 a.m., the shelter-in-place order had been lifted but officials advised commuters to avoid the area. From 2011 to 2015, fire departments responded to an average of nearly 38,000 fires at industrial or manufacturing properties in the United States each year, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

Explosions at oil refineries can raise concerns about pollution, air quality and health effects. An explosion and asphalt fire at a refinery in Wisconsin in 2018 led to concerns about the health risk to those living downwind and questions about whether it was safe to plant vegetables in soil in the area. A 2017 report produced by the N.A.A.C.P., the National Medical Association and the Clear Air Task Force found that the refinery that exploded in Philadelphia was responsible for 72 percent of toxic air emissions in the city, The Inquirer reported. The Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, announced that it was deploying a team to the Philadelphia site. The Philadelphia Health Department said that officials took air samples after the explosion on Friday and that preliminary tests had found no ambient carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons or hydrogen sulfides. Other samples were being tested. The department said it had “no findings that would point to any immediate danger in the surrounding community at this time.”

Source: NewYork Times