Taipei: Taiwan's CPC Corp said it will restart a 50,000 barrel per day (bpd) residual fluid catalytic cracker in Taoyuan on Monday following a five-day shutdown, denying media reports it was running short on fuel.

A company source also said two other units at its Kaohsiung plant that have been shut for months could reopen in April, easing a supply squeeze that had forced CPC to cut back exports.

A vice president at the company, Taiwan's main domestic supplier of gasoline and diesel fuel, told Reuters that the RFCC unit at its Taoyuan refinery was due to resume operations on Monday. He said a report in the Economic Daily saying the company had less than 20 days reserves was incorrect.

The RFCC outage followed a fire at a 100,000 bpd crude unit in Kaohsiung last year and the early January shutdown of a 30,000 bpd vacuum gas oil unit after a blast at the same refinery. The Kaohsiung plant has a capacity of 220,000 bpd, but has been running at only 120,000 bpd for months due to the outages.

A company source said the VGO, which processes heavy gas oil into lighter material which is then used to make gasoline, should resume operations by the end of April.

He also said the CDU could start up next month, although CPC has failed to hit previous restart date for the crude unit.

The source said operating rates at the 200,000 bpd Taoyuan refinery are expected to recover from about 50 percent currently to the usual 90 percent later this week following the RFCC restart. He said the unit had been shut since last Wednesday.

CPC has cut gasoline exports from around 755,000 barrels a month to about 440,000 barrels due to Kaohsiung refinery woes, but has no intention of importing fuels, a spokesman said.

Inventories are sufficient to support domestic needs for 63 days of gasoline and 78 days of diesel, the spokesman said.

The Economic Daily had reported that the amount affected by the shutdown was equal to about 75,000 bpd, compared with daily demand in Taiwan for about 200,000 bpd.

The vice president declined to be more specific about the nature of the maintenance, or the size of Taiwan's reserves, adding the company would issue a statement later in the day.

The shutdown prompted CPC to call an emergency internal meeting on Monday to evaluate the company's reserves, the newspaper report said.

Source : UNI