Vietnam’s Dung Quat refinery wraps maintenance

State-owned Petrovietnam has completed the second planned maintenance turnaround since 2011 at its 140,000-b/d Dung Quat refinery in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam (OGJ Online, May 20, 2014).

The scheduled turnaround, which shuttered the refinery for 2 months beginning on May 19, lasted 57 days and included the completion of nearly 7,000 maintenance items, Petrovietnam said.

The overall maintenance project was divided into five main packages, one of which included maintenance of rotating equipment, electrical equipment, automation equipment, as well as the implementation of a number of simple static devices and oil pipelines, Petrovietnam said.

Other work items entailed the repair of defects for thermal expansion joints in the refinery’s residue fluidized catalytic cracking unit and the connection of awaiting ends for a second sulfur recovery unit (SRU) at the site, the company said.

While Petrovietnam’s Vice-Pres. Le Manh Hung commended refinery manager Binh Son Refining & Petrochemical Co. Ltd. for the timely completion of turnaround activities, he also noted ongoing challenges the Dung Quat refinery faces.

In addition to diversifying its product slate, the refinery also must increase processing capacity as well as its ability to process a more varied slate of crudes, Hung said.

The Vietnamese government in 2010 approved plans to raise capacity at Dung Quat—Vietnam’s only refinery—to nearly 200,000 b/d (OGJ Online, Aug. 13, 2010), but a definitive feasibility study (DFS) on the proposed project has faced a series of delays.

Earlier this month, Hung requested JGC Corp., which serves as contractor on implementation of the Dung Quat expansion project as well as the additional SRU, to complete the DFS formulation by end-August and accelerate the completion of the SRU project, according to an Aug. 14 release from Petrovietnam.