Indian Oil to shut key units at Koyali refinery for maintenance - sources

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Oil Corp. the country's biggest refiner, will shut key units at its 274,000 barrel-per-day Koyali refinery in western Gujarat state from Thursday for maintenance and upgrade, two sources with knowledge of the plan said.

The refiner would be revamping a 2.2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) diesel hydrotreater during a 41-day shutdown to boost production of Euro IV compliant fuel, they said.

IOC also planned to carry out maintenance and upgrade job at some crude distillation units (CDU) and secondary units linked to the diesel hydrotreater, they said.

Koyali refinery has five CDUs. Due to planned shutdown of refinery units, IOC recently booked diesel cargoes for imports in June.

From Thursday IOC would shut two crude units of 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) and 76,000 bpd for 25 days and 41 days for maintenance and to enhance capability to process tough crude grades, they said.

It would also shut another crude unit of 44,000 bpd about 8 days after CDU 1 resumes operations, they added.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Edmund Blair)