India MRPL delays hydrocracker restart to Nov 1st week - co exec

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd has delayed the restart of its hydrocracker to the first week of November after cracks were detected in the equipment, its head of refineries said on Monday.

State-owned MRPL, which operates a 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) coastal refinery in southern India, had shut units including a 1.2-million-tonnes a year hydrocracker for maintenance last month.

The units were to restart in mid-October.

"Minor cracks were noticed in the quench nozzle in two of the reactors, so we are getting them repaired by the original equipment manufacturers," M. Venkatesh told Reuters, adding diesel output would be reduced by 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes due to the delay.

He said all units are functional except the hydrocracker, which undergoes "critical inspection" and catalyst change every two years.

"The very purpose of inspection is to find out such issues, if any. If it is there we repair it and come back," he added.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Sunil Nair)