Yes – this is about 6 month lag from where it was susposed to be but then a lot of construction and drum orders are lagging that much.  Foster Wheeler is doing the drum replacement for Flint Hills along with the drum structure & blowdown system on the No3 coker / coker island – the drums are being replaced on “End of Life” requirements but will be larger than the existing ones. This is part of the Pinebend expansion that will add ~50MBD Heavy crude capacity to plant & push it up to 330 MBD total charge – the plant is on almost a 100% diet of Canadian Bitumen crudes.
 
Flint Hills also replaced the Corpus Refinery Coke drums in 2007.
 
Regards

Project has been delayed for a third time. An October 2008 start is the current plan.

Sorry, make that a fourth time. The project has now been delayed until the first quarter of 2009.

If Flint Hills has delayed coker drum replacement a 4th time ….. then they officially move into same category as Pemex & Pdvsa!
Two delays and it is still in Refinery plan / strategy mode…..but 3-4 delays and it becomes a chinese fire drill or accident waiting to happen.  Delayed replacements of critical equipment with potentials for failure only get delayed on paper ….. in real life if you keep passing a scheduled maintenance downtime it becomes an unscheduled shutdown with repair damage to go along with previous replacement and couple extra weeks as bonus!
 

Guest – Thank you for providing your insight…Flint Hills Resources places a very high priority on Personal and Process Safety. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss our Drum Strategy with respect to these priorities.