Thomas Jenke, chief operations officer with North Atlantic, says his team has been working hard to turn the Come By Chance refinery from a low-cost, low-performance refinery into a world-class facility over the last four years.
Jenke joined the team in January after working in Brunei on the west coast of Africa at Brunei LNG, a natural gas partnership between the country and Shell.
Since Silverpeak Strategic Partnership bought the Come By Chance refinery in 2014, the company has spent over $250 million on the site, upping its production capacity from 100,000 to 135,000 barrels of oil a year.
In late April, one-third of the refinery has been shut down to undergo a turnaround, which is essentially a lengthy, thorough inspection of the facility, from top to bottom.
“We’re doing this regularly for every five to six years, where we are turning the inside of the unit out. We have an opportunity to see what is the status of every piece of equipment,” said Jenke.
“It’s to ensure that it’s safe to operate — safety is really close to heart. If we do those repairs now, we can continue to safely operate for the next five years.”
Safety has to be a priority, with memories of an explosion 20 years ago that took the lives of two workers on the site in March 1998.
There was another minor incident in October 2016 when a man caused a bag of acetylene to explode. There were no injuries in that incident.
Next year, another turnaround will start that will shut down another third of the refinery. Jenke says that will be an ongoing process to ensure the long-term reliability of the refinery.
Along with increasing production, the facility has found a way to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 2014.
The refinery has reduced sulphur emissions by 40 per cent since 2014, and carbon dioxide emissions by 17 per cent since 2016.
Typically, there are 390 full-time employees at the refinery. With the turnaround, an additional 250 workers have come in to help with the process.
The turnaround process underway is the largest North Altantic has performed on the refinery, which will cost $40 million to complete. A planning team of 35-40 people worked for eight months just to prepare for the inspection.
Jenke says everything has been taken into consideration for the inspection.
“You need to make sure that at the end of the turnaround, there’s not a pile of bolts left over and you say, ‘What does that belong to?’” he said.
“Everything we take out will go right back in.”
Premier Dwight Ball, Natural Resources Minister Siobhan Coady, Placentia West-Bellvue MHA Mark Browne and Terra Nova MHA Colin Holloway were on hand on Friday for a tour of the plant. Politicians and media weaved between a labyrinth of pipes, hoses and cables as the workers carried on with the turnaround efforts.
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