(Adds Hengyuan official comment)
SINGAPORE, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Refineries at Port Dickson on
Peninsular Malaysia's west coast are unable to receive crude oil
after a port facility that carries crude from the ships to the
plants broke down.
A system known as a single point mooring (SPM) unit, a
loading buoy anchored offshore that allows tankers to offload
their crude via pipeline to the refineries, has been out of
service, the refinery operators said.
The SPM connects to a refinery operated by Hengyuan Refining
Company Bhd (HRC), a subsidiary of China's Shandong
Hengyuan Petrochemical Co, and a second plant owned by the
Philippines' largest refiner Petron Corp.
Petron Malaysia Refining & Marketing Bhd (PMRMB)
confirmed that its Port Dickson refinery cannot receive crude
oil to produce refined products due to an SPM problem, and said
it had taken necessary measures to import more refined products
to meet its needs.
The SPM is anticipated to return to normal operations by
early November and the company's temporary inability to process
crude oil at the refinery will not impact its supply of finished
products to the market, PMRMB said.
A Shandong-based official with Hengyuan's parent company
confirmed the refiner was replacing a broken valve of the
pipeline of the SPM unit, but said he has no knowledge how long
the repair work would take.
Hengyuan's refinery has a capacity of 156,000 barrels per
day (bpd), while Petron's refinery has a crude distillation
capacity of 88,000 bpd, according to their websites.
The outage appears to have delayed two ships that were
scheduled to unload at the port, shipping data on Refinitiv
Eikon showed.
Royal Dutch Shell has chartered the Maran Plato, a
Suezmax-sized tanker, to discharge on Oct. 18 and the Torm
Valborg, an Aframax-sized vessel, on Oct. 16, the data showed.
But the tankers were still anchored off the port laden with
crude as of Tuesday, the data showed.
Shell declined to comment.
When contacted by Reuters, the Port Dickson Marine
Department said the companies that have operations in Port
Dickson run their own mooring operations and the department was
not aware of any delay in shipments as they did not receive any
complaints.
(Reporting By Shu Zhang, Florence Tan and Seng Li Peng;
Additional reporting by Joseph Sipalan in Kuala Lumpur and
Enrico Dela Cruz in Manila; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
and David Evans)
