Two industry sources said that a fire started at the'main diesel hydrotreating units of Tyumen refinery' on June 6, due to a technical issue. This may force teh plant to cut back its operations.

The unit's capacity is 2.6 million metric tonnes per year or 72% of total refinery diesel hydrotreating capability.

Alexander Moor, the governor of Tyumen's region, said on Saturday that a fire had broken out at a treatment unit in the refinery due to "process upset". According to?sources, the outage could have caused a temporary stop in the crude processing at the facility. The refinery has not yet ceased operations. RI-Invest - which owns the refinery - did not reply to a comment request.

Sources said that about two thirds of the refinery’s diesel output are exported via a pipeline designed for ultra low sulphur fuel with sulphur levels of up to 10ppm.

The refinery would have to ship a large volume of high-sulphur gasoline by alternative means, which would complicate logistics and increase costs.

Sources predict that the refinery will reconfigure its operations and resume "runs with reduced throughput" during repairs. The nominal capacity of the?Tyumen refining plant is around 8 million tonnes per year. According to estimates, it processes approximately 6 million tons crude oil annually and produces 0.5 million tons gasoline and 2.5 millions tons diesel. (Reporting and Editing by Jan Harvey).

(source: Reuters)