Mexico's Pemex Sees Restart of Salina Cruz Refinery
Mexican state oil producer Pemex said on Thursday that it expects to restart operations on July 30 at Salina Cruz, its largest oil refinery, after it was hit last week hit by flooding and subsequent fire that forced a shutdown of the plant.
The program contemplates three-way actions: Restarting operations; cleaning and rehabilitation of the affected site and general maintenance, taking advantage of the shutdown of the process.
This last activity would allow for the advancement of the maintenance that was scheduled for next April, thus reducing the financial impact of the shutdown of the refinery. It is estimated that operations of the refinery will restart on July 30.
The installation of new crude oil pumps to feed into the refinery is underway, on a site different from the area where the fire occurred. This will allow the company to start pumping crude oil even before the cleanup and recovery work in the affected area has concluded, which is a task that has already begun as well.
The full Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is being performed, per applicable regulations, in order to establish the factors that originated the emergency.
Petróleos Mexicanos hereby reaffirms to its customers that it has established several measures to guarantee the timely supply of fuels in the area.
