SINGAPORE, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Singapore has issued a stopwork order on a fire-hit unit at Royal Dutch Shell's 500,000 barrels per day refinery on Pulau Bukom island off thecity-state, Shell said on Wednesday.
"A stop work order concerning the affected unit was issuedby the Ministry of Manpower on Aug. 25," a Shell spokeswomansaid.
A stop work order is usually issued in cases where severelapses in safety and health conditions cause immediate danger tothe people at work.
A fire broke out on Aug. 21 at a section of an unidentifiedunit undergoing maintenance at the Pulau Bukom Manufacturingsite, Shell's largest wholly owned plant. Six contractor workerssuffered burns and were hospitalised.
The refiner stopped all work in units undergoing scheduledmaintenance and eventually stopped all non-essential activitiesacross the site, the spokeswoman said.
"All other units at the Pulau Bukom Manufacturing Sitecontinue to operate normally and there is no expected disruptionto our planned production rates," she said.
Two of six contract workers remained in the intensive careunit as of late August, while the other four had beendischarged, the spokeswoman added, declining to give the latestupdate on the condition of the workers.
Investigations into the cause of the fire were ongoing.
Shell declined to give further details on how long the unitwill be shut for or how much supply will be affected.
But traders said Shell was in the spot market on Tuesdaylooking for an early-October loading gasoil cargo at a higherthan market price.
It was unclear whether the requirement for a cargo was related to the loss of production at the refinery.
In May, Reuters reported that Shell was planning to shutBukom's largest 210,000 bpd crude unit and a diesel-producinghydrocracker unit for one to two months in the third quarter forplanned maintenance.
The refinery suffered production losses in September 2011due to a fire that forced the company to shut down a crude unitand a fluid catalytic cracker.
(Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan;Editing by SimonCameron-Moore)