Kansas refinery scheduled for late-August restart

CVR Refining LP, Sugar Land, Tex., has notified state regulators it will restart its 115,000-b/d refinery at Coffeyville, Kan., in late August after it completes repairs and maintenance work in the wake of a July 29 fire that led to the plant’s shutdown (OGJ Online, July 29, 2014).

“[CVR Refining] plans for the Coffeville refinery to be up and running again on or around Aug. 27,” Sara Belfry, communications director for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told OGJ via e-mail.

“My understanding is that [CVR Refining] decided to proceed with upgrades, which were scheduled to occur next year, during the shutdown,” Belfry said.

While the current status of fire-related repairs at the plant remains unavailable, CVR Refining has confirmed that it expected the refinery to be down about 4 weeks based upon a preliminary assessment of the damage, according to its Aug. 1 quarterly earnings report to investors.

The fire, which broke out in the refinery’s isomerization (isom) unit at about 12:30 a.m. on July 29 and was extinguished less than an hour later, injured four employees (OGJ Online, Aug. 1, 2014).

The subsequent shutdown of site-wide operations was due to a failure of the refinery’s distributed control system, which was directly caused by the fire, CVR Refining said in its 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the 3 months ending June 30.

Details regarding the nature of scheduled maintenance brought forward during the present shutdown period have not been disclosed.