Naphthenic base oil producer Ergon began a turnaround in the first half of January at its Vicksburg, Miss., refinery, as it finalized its planned 6,500 barrel per day expansion, which will include production of bright stock.
We actually are in a planned turnaround thats been on the books for over a year, Ergon Vice President James Mike Burnett Jr. told Lube Report. We havent been so concerned about the shutdown simply because November and December were low enough months in sales that we knew we werent going to have an inventory issue with this shutdown/turnaround.
Typically were down three to four weeks with a turnaround between the two units, he continued. Right now our plans are to be down longer than that. Were not exactly sure of the time period, from the standpoint that typically weve always spent extra dollars to get something up quickly. Weve decided, with the market, to go ahead and have our fabrication crews finish out some of the work with the contractors. Well be wrapping up both the expansion as well as the planned turnaround.
Burnett dispelled rumors the turnaround might be as long as six months. Were not only not going to be doing that, but we plan to have the expansion up on target, he said. We do feel like the expanded part of the plant well be bringing on some time in April, or possibly the first of May. We think even with the economy, therell be the sales for us to do that.
The expansion will increase the refinerys pale oil capacity from a current 12,500 b/d per day to about 19,000 b/d. A sizeable part of the expansion is for overseas export barrels, he added. We felt like the U.S. market has been fairly balanced in the past. So that was for aromatic extract replacement – for the tire industry – plus export barrels.
A second part of the expansion at Vicksburg, expected to come online in August, will be production of a naphthenic bright stock, though it wont actually be called that despite coming from naphthenic crude. Bright stock tends to be specification driven, and we will be selling it under a different branded name, Burnett stated. It does look like some of the bright stock presently on the market. Weve already gotten some approval test runs with customers, and theyre waiting to get the final product to finish up the approvals.
While Burnett expects to continue seeing impacts from the sluggish economy through at least the first half of 2009, January left some room for optimism. Weve had significant business pickup in January – thats been both in North America and some of our export business, he noted. November-December was something I had never seen before, and most of the people I talked to had never seen it. People were not wanting to carry inventories – a big concern was how much [the price of] crude was going to drop, and they didnt want to be holding products if crude kept dropping.