(Adds company spokesman not available, adds details on outage,
restarts, background on refinery)
HOUSTON, March 14 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc
is preparing to restart the crude distillation units (CDUs) at
its 318,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) joint-venture Deer Park, Texas,
refinery as early as Sunday night, said sources familiar with
plant operations.
The restart of the 270,000-bpd DU-2 CDU and the 70,000-bpd
DU-1 CDU between Sunday night and Monday, assuming no setbacks,
will begin the restart of all other units at the refinery, the
sources said.
A Shell spokesman did not immediately reply to a request for
comment.
Shell began preparing to restart the crude units on
Saturday. The CDUs were shut by a pump seal failure on Feb. 14.
Other units at the refinery were shut on Feb. 15 because of the
effects of severe cold weather.
The Deer Park refinery is last to begin restarting following
the severe cold that cascaded across the U.S. Gulf Coast in
mid-February.
The Deer Park refinery is a 50-50 joint-venture between
Shell and Mexico’s national oil company, Pemex. Shell
is the managing partner.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Diane Craft and Daniel
Wallis)