Taiwan's Formosa Petrochem shuts refinery unit on leak

Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp has shut one of two residue desulphurizer (RDS) units at its 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery in Mailiao due to a leak, and it may restart in about a week's time, a company spokesman said on Friday.

Its other RDS unit is running at full capacity, he said.

Both RDS units have a capacity of about 80,000 bpd each.

An RDS is a unit that removes sulphur from crude.

'The No. 1 RDS was shut on Thursday and likely we would need about a week or so to restart the unit,' he said.

Formosa has three crude distillation units in the plant with a capacity of 180,000 bpd each.

It also owns two residue fluid catalytic crackers (RFCC), or gasoline-making units, with each having a capacity of 84,000 bpd.

Formosa's no.1 RFCC was shut on July 24 following a steam leakage and is expected to resume operations in about two weeks.

Source: XE News