In the know! you could say i'm in the know~ I have access to alot of information within the company however i'm not an executive or anyone that makes major production decisions so the information i divulge can be aquired by calling investor relations..
I'm an operator/ and fill in for the shift team leader once in awhile.
In regards to the 13,000 Barrels spilled i haven't heard anything regarding that. We recently had to shutdown our pipeline a couple weeks ago due to high temperature exiting Syncrude tankage and going down the pembina pipeline.
We can't exceed 45C on the pipeline and we jumped a blip over. So we had to change our blend to get our temperature down to continue shipping. Our Syncrude Sweet Blend is a mixture of Light and heavy gas oil + Naptha. We simply added more Naphtha to the blend and cut some LGO which was the hottest component. Bringing the overall temperature down but in essence giving away the high API good stuff in naphtha~
Our Naphtha is always low n2 and low sulpur with a specific gravity of > 60 sometimes it approaches as high as 65-68.
No onto the shutdown related material that is affecting production.
We're Currently on recycle on plant 15-2 and plant 18-2 and 13-2 all these units produce over 200k when online. 15-2 can do 78k of HGO ( heavy gas oil) plant 18-2 can do 90k barrels of LGO (light gas oil) it's an arromatic saturation unit.. it actually Yields more then what goes into the unit.. 90k feed can yield us 94k barrels. Aromatic saturation happens when we hydrotreat.. adding hydrogen to gasoil in a reactor in the presence of a catalyst +pressure and heat will give us extra Hydrocarbons in the end. we call this SWELL~ great money maker!
13-2 is a naptha unit that had it's shutdown extended because of issues with our compressor.. it's undergoing a new overhaul and the mechanical seals in the compressor were toasts and the lube and seal oil system for the driver underwent a complete overhaul. (steam turbine) So that set us back by 10 days or so. 13-2 can produce 45k BPD of naptha.
so 75k + 45k+ 90k= 210 BPD we're missing right now.
we should have that back soon. We'll also have the DEA plants and sour water plants back soon as well as the 1 hydrogen plant that's down.. these bottlenecks will get us back in the game and pushing 350-400k down the pipeline for all july august and september.. we should have an execellent 3rd Q
18-1 which does 100k BPD is having some DP (differential pressure) issues across the reactors ( pluggage) and slowly growing so they may need to do a skim or a full catalyst replacement on the reactors.. not sure if it will be on all 4 or just 1-2.. more infomation down the road. But if it doesn't get any worst we may be able to hold off! i was told today it's probably going to happen as someone said they thought we already ordered the catalyst. Hopefully not because we only did a shutdown on that in 2010 and that was supposed to last until 2014. That would be unplanned.
I'll add more later!