Engen Refinery startup

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Durban's Engen Refinery, which was temporarily shut down following a fire during the early hours of 13 November, should be back in full production in early January.

The process of rebuilding the damaged section of the crude unit where the fire occurred has progressed considerably faster than expected and is now virtually completed.

According to Refinery GM Willem Oosthuizen mechanical handover of the restored section to the refinery's operations division is scheduled to take place on 22 December, just 39 days after the plant was shut down.

"We initially thought the refinery might be closed for up to four months because of the incident. That changed because we have been able to refurbish two of the three electric motor and pump sets that were at the centre of the fire. Equally significant has been the way the refinery team and contractors have rallied to address the problem with efficiency and dedication.

The rebuild has been handled by a construction and engineering team of about 200 people. This team included 14 welding teams that installed the 10 tons of structural supports and 1.5km of piping that was replaced.

The scope of work has also included:

• More than 10km of electrical and Instrumentation rewiring;
• Repairing 18 control valves,
• Repairing of 15 pumps and motors; and,
• Painting the new facilities with protective coating (about 1000 square metres)

In the interim the root cause investigation and analysis aimed at pinpointing the cause (or causes) of the mechanical failure that caused the fire is nearing completion. The investigation team included four experts from Engen's Malaysian parent Petronas and an independent engineer nominated by Engen's insurance underwriters.

According to Oosthuizen this is a painstaking process that involves scrutiny of evidence from the fire as well as a comprehensive history of the failed pump set's performance.

"We expect the report back from this in about a week. That report will then be submitted to the authorities before the findings can be made public," he explained.

He adds that Engen will obviously examine the final report in great detail to identify any additional preventative measures that could be taken. "We have also already improved several procedures based on the post fire assessment which we do after any process safety event.

"These assessments highlight the things that worked well, like our fire fighting efforts that were accurate and the areas where we want to do better like the speed of communication to our neighbours during the event," he said.

On the issue of air quality during the fire, Oosthuizen said the analysis of samples taken during and after the fire have been analysed by a specialist laboratory in Italy and forwarded to a toxicologist nominated by the authorities to determine whether or not the fire posed any health risk, however temporary, to our neighbours.

It will then be up to the authorities to release the toxicologist's report.