Mažeikiai, April 8. ORLEN Lietuva refinery resumes its operations after the scheduled Turnaround. Production resumed on 7th April. The refinery will be fully operating on 11th April.

During Turnaround, which lasted two weeks, the preventive inspection of Refinery process units and pipelines was carried out and respective engineering modifications were performed to debottleneck seasonal process constrains.

One of key projects implemented – modernization of fluid catalytic cracking* unit- will prevent from oil processing constrains in summer.

‘At hot weather conditions we had to limit unit charge rate, whereas now we will be able to utilize the whole design capacity of the unit‘- says Viktoras Vasilavičius, ORLEN Lietuva Deputy Director for Operations. According to him, this is one of the most important investments with value of approx. 1,5 million Litas.

One more project related to seasonal restrictions – cooling system installation for new vacuum tower - was also implemented within those two weeks. The above project was intended for installation of water cooling system to maintain constant water temperature both in winter and summer. Refinery has invested over 3 million Litas in this project.

Significant works were executed during Visbreaker** Unit modernization. The modifications during Turnaround will allow operating the unit all the year without any breaks and increase performance indices.  The investment value – 2,8 million Litas.

Scheduled Turnaround of the Refinery was commenced on March 26. Uninterruptable fuel supply to customers was ensured from the previously accumulated stocks. Two thousand employees - Refinery personnel and 41 Lithuanian and Polish contracting company - were involved in the turnaround works.

*Conversion of crude oil and petroleum products achieved by using catalyst at high-pressure and temperature conditions (450–550 °C) in order to produce light petroleum products.

**Visbreaker unit processes vacuum distillation residue into heating oil.