Page 6 - LatAmOil Week 15 2021

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Pemex: Minatitlan oil refinery

will take three months to repair

MEXICO’S national oil company (NOC)
Pemex has said it will probably need around
three months to complete repair work at the
Minatitlan refinery in Veracruz State.
Earlier this week, Pemex reported that it
hoped to bring some of the 285,000 barrel per
day (bpd) plant’s facilities back on stream by
the end of April. It also reported, though, that
it expected all repairs to be completed in about
90 days.
The oil-processing plant has been offline
since April 7, when a fire broke out, injuring
seven people. Pemex initially said that the blaze
may have started in a fuel storage tank, but it
later stated that flames had broken out first The Minatitlan refinery has a capacity of 285,000 bpd (Photo: Grupo Cobra)
inside a pump house used to move gasoline. The
latter statement is in line with the conclusions safety protocols led or contributed to the fire.
reached by ASEA, Mexico’s state environmental The Minatitlan plant is one of six refineries
and workplace safety agency. owned and operated by Pemex. It is one of three
ASEA has now begun a physical inspection Pemex facilities that have been outfitted with
of the refinery in order to carry out a root-cause coking capacity so that they can convert resid-
analysis of the incident. The primary purpose of ual fuel oil into lighter and higher-value distillate
the probe is to determine whether violations of fuels. ™

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Trinidad and Tobago preparing

for another attempt to sell Petrotrin

TRINIDAD and Tobago’s Energy Ministry is
reportedly preparing to launch another pri-
vatisation campaign for the oil refinery in
Point-a-Pierre.
Energy Minister Franklin Khan told the TV6
television channel in an interview earlier this
week that his ministry had teamed up with the
Finance Ministry to draw up a new request for
proposals (RfP). The two sides expect to finish
this task very soon, he said.
“In a couple of weeks, we will go out with a
new request for proposal for the refinery. That
is in the hands of the minister of finance [Colm
Imbert],” he stated. The 140,000 bpd Petrotrin refinery has been idle since 2019 (File Photo)
Khan said he expected the new privatisation
drive to attract considerable interest because the higher price than BP’s east coast crude. There
refinery was configured to process heavy crude. is a market for a refinery of that nature,” he
“My optimism is based on the fact that Herit- explained, referring to Heritage Petroleum Co.
age’s crude, which is heavy crude, is fetching a Ltd (HPCL), the national oil company (NOC)..

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 15 15•April•2021