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HOUSTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Increased activity pointing to apossible restart was seen on Sunday afternoon around the largecrude distillation unit that has been shut since Aug. 8 at BPPlc's 413,500 barrel per day (bpd) Whiting, Indiana,refinery, said energy industry intelligence service Genscape.
While saying the activity was below operational levels,Genscape did say activity was seen at one of the unit's furnacestacks and increased heating was detected in the vacuumdistillation section of the 240,000 bpd CDU, which is calledPipestill 12.
A BP spokesman declined on Sunday to discuss the Genscapereport.
CDUs, which do the initial refining of crude oil in arefinery and provide feedstock for all other units, operate attemperatures above 700 degrees Fahrenheit (371 degrees Celsius).When a unit is idled and allowed to cool to atmospherictemperature, it can take up to several days to return tooperating temperature before production can resume.
Pipestill 12's outage has roiled U.S. oil and gasolinemarkets, and a lengthy outage had been anticipated until latelast week when a report said leaks on the unit's heat exchangermay have been repaired and a restart could begin as early thisweek. (Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Sandra Maler)
