Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner, said it may need one to two weeks to have two-thirds of its Mailiao oil refinery fully operational after a fire damaged a unit three days ago.
Formosa is preparing to restart one of the crude processing units at the plant and may begin feeding oil to it tomorrow, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday the refiner could take a year to restart the residual desulfurization unit damaged by Sunday’s fire.
“I am not that pessimistic,” Lin said by telephone.
The company shut the 540,000-barrel-a-day refinery for safety reasons after on oil leak triggered a fire at the No. 2 residual desulfurization unit, Lin said on Monday.
The blaze was the second accident at the refiner’s Mailiao complex this month. Formosa halted its No. 1 ethylene plant, which has an annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes, on July 7 after a fire.
Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券) analyst Danny Ho (何耀仁) said Formosa may need as little as two months to resume production at the residual processing unit and supporting plants.
The refinery has three crude distillation units, each able to process 180,000 barrels a day. The plants heat crude and separate it into oil products. Residual desulfurization units remove sulfur from residual fuel.
Direct losses” from the fire are estimated at NT$500 million (US$15.6 million), the company said in a statement on Monday.
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