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By Erwin Seba
HOUSTON, July 1 (Reuters) - Motiva Enterprises' Convent, Louisiana refinery has shelved plans for a gasolineunit overhaul in October despite a six-to-nine-month delay in aplanned revamp of the refinery, according to sources familiarwith the company's plans on Friday.
Earlier this year, Motiva began planning the Octoberoverhaul of the 92,000 barrel per day (bpd) fluidic catalyticcracking unit at the 235,000 bpd Convent refinery.
Instead, the FCCU will remain in operation until at leastJune 2017 when it will be permanently closed, said the twosources who were not authorized to speak to the media about thematter.
The refinery's sulfur recovery units are to be overhauled inOctober and two hydrotreaters will be reconfigured in November,the sources said. The heavy oil hydrocracker is scheduled for arevamp in February.
If all goes as planned, the refinery will be reconfigured tooperate without the FCCU by June 2017 when the Convent refineryis to be linked by pipeline with the 237,700 bpd Norco refinery.Motiva announced plans in March 2015 to combine the two afterthe Convent revamp is complete.
But, if the Convent refinery FCCU breaks down before itsdecommissioning date, the refinery may have to undertake repairs to the unit, the sources said. The cost of the fall overhaulhad been estimated by Motiva at $75 million.
"Whether they repair the cat cracker depends on if theconversions are complete," one of the sources said.
The 36,000 bpd Hydrotreating Unit-2 and the 30,000 bpdHydrotreating Unit-3 are to be converted to produce low-sulfurvacuum gas oil in a project to begin Nov. 1, according to thesources. HTU-2 removes sulfur from gasoline and diesel, whileHTU-3 processes distillates.
The low sulfur gas oil from the converted units will be sentto the Norco refinery to run in its 112,000 bpd cat cracker, oneof the goals of the combination plan announced last year.
The refinery's five sulfur recovery units, collectivelycalled the sulfur block, are to be overhauled in October priorto the work on the two HTUs. The SRUs collect sulfur extractedby the HTUs.
The refinery's 45,000 bpd heavy oil hydrocracker, called theH-Oil Unit, is scheduled to be shut on Feb. 1 for a plannedrevamp to be able to run purchased heavy aromatic feeds. (Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Richard Chang and JamesDalgleish)
