Mexico's Dos Bocas refinery offline due to power outage, sources say

By Shariq Khan

Aug 27 - Mexico's 340,000-barrel-per-day Dos Bocas refinery has been offline since Monday due to a power outage at the plant, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The refinery, also called Olmeca, was forced to shutdown all processing units on Monday after heavy rainfall directly impacted a compressor on the 94,000 bpd gasoline-producing unit, industry monitor IIR said.

The rainfall triggered a chain reaction which ultimately resulted in damage to a transformer at the plant, IIR said.

The refinery will attempt to restart units on Thursday, one of the sources told Reuters.

Mexican state energy company Pemex did not respond to requests for comment.

A prolonged outage of the refinery could leave Mexico short of its immediate gasoline requirements and push Pemex's trading arm to seek more imports from the international market, a market participant said. The United States is the largest fuel exporter to Mexico.

The Olmeca refinery, Mexico's newest, has ramped up operations in recent months after years of startup delays and spiraling costs, but it is still a long way from reaching full capacity.

The refinery took in about 156,265 bpd of crude oil in July, less than half its total capacity, according to latest official data. It produced about 57,275 bpd of gasoline and 76,980 bpd of diesel in July, the data showed.