JAKARTA: Indonesia's Pertamina has shut crude distillation units with total current capacity of 280,000 barrels per day (bpd) at the Cilacap refinery in central Java, the biggest in the country.
The shutdown at the 348,000 bpd refinery is likely to lead to increased gasoline and diesel imports by Indonesia, Asia's biggest gasoline importer though Pertamina said stocks were being used to maintain supply.
"We are trying to restart one of the two refinery units that are down this week," said Pertamina's CEO Karen Agustiawan told reporters in Cilacap.
A Pertamina spokesman said late on Wednesday that the refinery's main units were running normally, but Bambang Harijanto, a general manager at the plant, said one 110,000 bpd unit had been shut on Saturday and the other 170,000 bpd unit on Tuesday.
The decision to shut the units, making products such as gasoline, kerosene and diesel, came after a fire broke out on Saturday at a storage tank containing a gasoline component and then spread to two other nearby tanks.
"As a standard operating procedure, we didn't want the fire to spread to the refineries that were still operating, so we have shut them down," said Harijanto.
The fire died down on Wednesday, but the company on Thursday was still spraying foam on the tanks to cool them down, Pertamina spokeswoman Wianda Pusponegoro told Reuters.
Shell on Monday bought 140,000-200,000 barrels of 88-octane gasoline for second-half April lifting, the first deal in about 1-1/2 months of a grade that is used only by Indonesia in the region, traders said.
Traders said the cargo could be supplied to Indonesia following at the fire at Cilacap.
Although Shell has retail stations in Indonesia, only Pertamina is allowed to sell the subsidised 88-octane fuel to consumers, traders added.
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