Saudi Arabia shuts down Ras Tanura hydrocracker

Singapore: Saudi Aramco has shut a 44,000 barrels per day (bpd) hydrocracker at its Ras Tanura refinery for one to two weeks, following an outage at the problem-ridden unit, industry sources said on Friday.

The shutdown of the secondary unit, which processes residues to yield higher-value products such as naphtha and gas oil, has prompted the state refiner to offer a rare vacuum gas oil (VGO) cargo totalling 300,000 barrels for March lifting.

"The offer was on the back of selling another rare straight-run A960 cargo that they sold just last week. This unit has been quite troublesome and is the same one that couldn't be restarted after a turn-around last year," a Singapore-based Asian trader said.

"It's not clear how serious the problem is this time. They have said it would take a week or two. Let's see how many more VGO and straight-run cargoes they will sell, then we will know how severe the problem really is."

Deadline

The tender for the VGO cargo, for March 10-15 lifting from the 550,000-bpd Ras Tanura refinery, closes on Monday and will remain valid till a day later. It had sold a straight-run A960 parcel, after offering a cracked A961 lot initially, a week ago.

Aramco has also issued another tender offering 300,000 barrels of high-speed industrial diesel, for March 25 loading from its Rabigh refinery. The tender also closes on Monday.

Aramco last sold similar straight-run feedstocks, which it normally uses for the Ras Tanura hydrocracker, in May-June last year when technical snags delayed the restart of the unit following a planned turnaround.

At the time, Aramco sold five 90,000-tonne A960 cargoes, for April-May loading. The refiner also sold 11 VGO cargoes, totalling 2.75 million barrels, over a four-month period following an outage at its Yanbu refinery in 2006.