Reuters 23 Sep 15;
Singapore has issued a stop work order on a fire-hit unit at Royal Dutch Shell's 500,000 barrels per day refinery on Pulau Bukom island off the city-state, Shell said on Wednesday.
"A stop work order concerning the affected unit was issued by the Ministry of Manpower on Aug. 25," a Shell spokeswoman said.
A stop work order is usually issued in cases where severe lapses in safety and health conditions cause immediate danger to the people at work.
A fire broke out on Aug. 21 at a section of an unidentified unit undergoing maintenance at the Pulau Bukom Manufacturing site, Shell's largest wholly owned plant. Six contractor workers suffered burns and were hospitalised.
The refiner stopped all work in units undergoing scheduled maintenance and eventually stopped all non-essential activities across the site, the spokeswoman said.
"All other units at the Pulau Bukom Manufacturing Site continue to operate normally and there is no expected disruption to our planned production rates," she said.
Two of six contract workers remained in the intensive care unit as of late August, while the other four had been discharged, the spokeswoman added, declining to give the latest update on the condition of the workers.
Investigations into the cause of the fire were ongoing.
Shell declined to give further details on how long the unit will be shut for or how much supply will be affected.
But traders said Shell was in the spot market on Tuesday looking for an early-October loading gasoil cargo at a higher than market price.
It was unclear whether the requirement for a cargo was related to the loss of production at the refinery.
In May, Reuters reported that Shell was planning to shut Bukom's largest 210,000 bpd crude unit and a diesel-producing hydrocracker unit for one to two months in the third quarter for planned maintenance.
The refinery suffered production losses in September 2011 due to a fire that forced the company to shut down a crude unit and a fluid catalytic cracker.
(Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan;Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
