Tue Jun 19, 2012 3:28am IST
(Reuters) – Extensive corrosion, that may require up to five months to repair, has been found inside Motiva Enterprises new 325,000 barrel per day (bpd) crude distillation unit at its 600,000 bpd Port Arthur, Texas, refinery, according to sources familiar with refinery operations.
The root cause of the corrosion, found in vessels and piping on the crude distillation unit (CDU), has not been determined, the sources said.
Damage from a fire on the CDU during an attempted June 9 restart was seen as negligible, the sources said.
Motiva won’t know the full scale of repair work needed until it determines the cause of the corrosion, the sources said.
A Motiva representative was not immediately available to discuss refinery operations.
On Friday, Motiva said there was no timeline for bringing the crude unit back into production.
The unit began refining crude oil in April and was officially commissioned at a May 31 ceremony attended by the chief executives of Motiva’s owners Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Saudi Aramco
The Motiva Port Arthur CDU was built to run heavy, sour crude oil grades that have a high risk of corroding refinery units due to high sulfur content.
“There’s extensive corrosion in the crude unit itself,” one of the sources said. “All of it. Piping, vessels, all of it. It could take up to five months to fix. It will be several months.”
The CDU, which does the initial refining of crude oil coming into the refinery and provides the feedstock for all other refining units, is the centerpiece of a $10-billion, 5-year project to expand the refinery to be the nation’s largest.
At the time, the CDU was shut down it was three weeks away from reaching full production, a Motiva executive had said.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
