Chennai Petroleum may shut refinery units for month in Q4 - exec

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Chennai Petroleum Corp Ltd plans to shut an 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) crude unit and some secondary units for a month-long maintenance in October-December at its 210,000 bpd Manali refinery, its managing director A. S. Basu said.

He said the refiner will also shut a 2 million tonne per annum (mtpa) hydrocracker, a 400,000 tonne a year reformer, a 1 mtpa visbreaker and a 2 mtpa diesel hydrotreater for maintenance in October-December.

"As of now the plan is to shut the units sometime in October-December. However there could be a revision in the schedule based on demand-supply situation and pricing (of products)," Basu told Reuters.

Manali refinery in the southern state of Tamil Nadu has three crude units. Chennai Petroleum also operates the 20,000 bpd Nagapattinam refinery in the state.

The refiner had shut a 56,000 bpd crude unit and some other facilities at the Manali plant in November-December due to weakened cracks of gasoline, gasoil and some other products, he said.

Chennai Petroleum is a subsidiary of Indian Oil Corp , the country's biggest oil refiner.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)