Royal Dutch Shell Plc began starting up the crude distillation unit at its 225,300-barrel-per-day Norco refinery late last week, the Economic Times reports.
Once the 240,000-bpd CDU was back in production, the refinery planned to raise the production level on the 112,000-bpd gasoline-producing residual catalytic cracking unit, or RCCU.
Production on the CDU was cut earlier in the week to repair a leak, which led to the coker being shut. The coker was partially restarted two days later, with one production train running and the other on standby, the publication reports.
RCCU production was reduced due to the CDU cut.
The CDU does the primary refining of crude oil into hydrocarbon feedstocks for all production units at the refinery. The coker converts residual crude oil from distillation units into feedstock for motor fuels or petroleum coke, a coal substitute.
