Suncor’s Edmonton refinery suffers processing problem
David Finlayson, edmontonjournal.com
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Black smoke emitted from the Suncor refinery east of Edmonton on August 12, 2009.
EDMONTON - It will take “days not hours” to get Suncor’s Edmonton refinery back to full production after a problem at its hydrogen supplier caused the shutdown of some units for the second time in a month, the company said Thursday.
Production was re-started within a few hours Wednesday, but Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal could not say when the former Petro-Canada refinery will be back to full capacity or if supplies to gas stations will be affected, as they were by the shutdown caused by last month’s severe storm.
“A re-start does take time — days not hours,” she said.
Suncor has been bringing in supplies by rail from Montreal and by truck from other distribution centres since the July 18 shutdown and will continue to do so, she said.
All Edmonton and Calgary Petro-Canada stations had received supplies by Monday night, with a handful of stations in Winnipeg still without gasoline, she said.
Wednesday’s problem, which occurred at Air Products Ltd.’s plant adjacent to the refinery, caused a shut-off of critical hydrogen and steam supplies early in the afternoon, Air Products spokesman Art George said.
“We had a control systems issue which caused a temporary shutdown that lasted a few hours,” he said.
There was no equipment damage and the plant is working normally, he added.
Petro-Canada spent $2 billion converting the aging refinery to exclusively process bitumen from its oilsands properties.
Suncor completed its acquisition of Petro-Canada Aug. 1. in a deal that created a $43 billion behemoth.
The Air Products plant also supplies hydrogen to the neighbouring Imperial Oil refinery, but spokesman John Harding said operations there were running normally.
The controlled shutdown at the Suncor refinery caused thick black smoke and flames to be released.
Seetal said it did not cause a health hazard.
“We understand the public’s concern. We monitored the air quality and there are no public safety issues.”
The 135,000 barrel-a-day refinery was shut down for nine days after the July 18 storm cut off power to the catalytic cracker that helps convert oilsands bitumen to gasoline.
The storm also closed production at Imperial Oil’s Strathcona refinery, causing a gasoline shortage that pushed up pump prices as much as seven per cent.
Meanwhile, Shell Wednesday reported that a “process issue” at its Scotford refinery near Fort Saskatchewan caused intermittent flaring.
A Shell spokesman said the company does not discuss processing details, but production was not interrupted.
dfinlayson@thejournal.canwest.com
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