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Maintenance & Reliability

Ineos considers shifting refinery work due to Forties outage

LONDON (Reuters) — Ineos may bring forward maintenance work at its Grangemouth refinery in Scotland due to the unplanned outage at its Forties North Sea crude pipeline, which threatens to choke the plant's feedstock, industry sources said on Wednesday.

PDVSA's Amuay refinery halts distillation unit

CARACAS (Reuters) — Venezuela’s 645,000 bpd Amuay refinery has halted its distillation unit No. 5 due to an operational problem, union leader and opposition activist Ivan Freites said on Thursday.

Saudi Aramco to push back shutdown at Ras Tanura refinery

(Reuters) — Saudi Aramco is expected to shut down its condensate splitter at its Ras Tanura refinery by the end of November for a month for planned maintenance work, two industry sources said, later than originally planned.

Lukoil postpones maintenance of Volgograd refinery unit to 2018

MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russia’s Lukoil has postponed maintenance of hydro-cracking unit at its Volgograd refinery to March or April 2018, three trading industry sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

Wood Group awarded 5-yr maintenance contract for Phillips 66 refinery

HOUSTON — Wood Group has been awarded a 5-yr, multimillion dollar contract by Phillips 66 to provide supplemental maintenance services and support for small capital construction projects and turnarounds to the Sweeny Refinery, approximately 65 mi southwest of Houston.

XOS launches analyzer for testing critical elements in petroleum refineries

ALBANY, N.Y. — XOS has announced the worldwide release of Petra MAX, a new D4294 analyzer with combined analysis of 13 elements from P to Zn. Petra MAX delivers high-precision sulfur analysis in addition to rapid monitoring of critical elements like Ca, Fe, K, Ni, and V at sub-ppm levels.

S.Korea's GS Caltex shuts heavy oil upgrading unit after fire

SEOUL (Reuters) — GS Caltex, South Korea's second-largest oil refinery, said it has shut a heavy oil upgrading unit after a fire mishap on Thursday.

Rosneft's Tuapse plant suspends oil refining from Aug. 7–10

MOSCOW (Reuters) — Unplanned maintenance works have suspended oil refining at the Tuapse refinery, owned by Russia's largest oil company Rosneft, from Aug. 7–10, data released by the Russian Energy Ministry showed on Wednesday.

Major turnaround at Neste refinery to complete planned production structure change

In mid-August, Neste will begin a two-month shutdown at its refinery in Naantali, Finland. The major turnaround will complete the plan first introduced in 2014 to implement closer integration of the operations of the two Finnish refineries under uniform management. The Finnish refinery operations of Neste consist of four production lines at the Porvoo refinery, and one in Naantali.

Mexico's Pemex sees restart of Salina Cruz refinery on July 30

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) — Mexican state oil producer Pemex said on Thursday that it expects to restart operations on July 30 at Salina Cruz, its largest oil refinery, after it was hit last week hit by flooding and subsequent fire that forced a shutdown of the plant.