SAPREF gears up for planned maintenance shutdown

11 October 2004

SAPREF starts a six-week long major maintenance shutdown on 14 October following about 20 months of forward planning. The maintenance programme will involve a complete shutdown of a crude distiller, the visbreaker and a sulphur recovery unit, as well as minor shutdowns of the platformer for catalyst regeneration, and the alkylation unit and luboil plant for cleanout work.

An opportunity will also be taken to conduct project work aimed at improving equipment integrity. This will include the upgrade of piping susceptible to high temperature sulphur corrosion, and the replacement of the furnace coils on the high vacuum unit. The full cost of all activities will be about R260 million. The refinery is scheduled to be back in full operation on 22 November.

Up to 2500 contract workers will be working on site during the shutdown period and health, safety and environment performance will be the main focus area. Contract workers will undergo up to three levels of HSE induction before coming on site. Each person will also be medically tested, and many, especially fitters and boilermakers, will go through a competency assessment programme.

Four main mechanical contractors companies will be involved, with two of them being black economic empowerment companies.

Contingency measures are being taken to ensure an uninterrupted supply of fuel and other products during the shutdown period. SAPREF has a major shutdown of this magnitude every two years.

SAPREF's Profile

The SAPREF crude oil refinery is a 50/50 joint venture between Shell South Africa Energy and BP Southern Africa. SAPREF is southern Africa's largest crude oil refinery, with 35 percent of the country's refining capacity. This equates to 180 000 barrels of crude oil per day or 8.5 million tons per year. SAPREF's facilities comprise a single buoy mooring through which supplies of crude oil are received, a product storage facility at the Durban harbour, joint bunkering services which supplies fuel to ships bunkering at Durban and the refinery itself, which is located in Prospecton. The refinery has been operating since 1963. More than R480 million has been invested in environmental improvements since 1993, including a R350 million project commissioned in 2002 to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from the refinery by 46 percent.