Engineers at Eesti Energia at enormous pains to make the €225m oil plant work.
Money machine still on strike
10th September 2013, 12:50
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As it happened, Eesti Energia had to order remake of the new oil factory’s sophisticated smoke pipeline system, due to faulty design. The solution was simple: to reduce pressure of the smoke gas flowing in pipelines, a larger diameter had to be used – installing fatter pipes. Still to this day, however, tests are continuing to see if the four screw conveyors will stand the heat.
As Postimees’ reporters paid a visit to the plant, at Auvere, on Wednesday, it was not working. The week-long test having ended the night before. The fact that the plant had, indeed, been working, was attested by shale dust and heat everywhere. At the plant, shale turns into oil at close to 500 degrees Celsius, while burning happens at temperatures even higher.
As stated by launching manager Jaanus Rattur, they will be making another attempt today, if nothing «criminal» is found. So while you are reading this story, the heat is on again, right next to Narva: it taking about two days and nights to warm the plant.
Mr Rattur looks serious. Oil production director Igor Kond sounds a bit more light-hearted, but the most joyous of them all is Eesti Energia CEO Sandor Liive himself. The three of them are here to convince the public at large: the plant is perfect, the mechanical faults discovered and removed, the factory soon to buzz at top capacity, rewarding Eesti Energia with millions of euros a year.
The plant has cost €225; according to prior promises, it should be working for a year, already. Mr Liive mentions that, in all probability, Outotec will not be paid the full amount by its contractor.
The stand-still has cost the company an estimated €60m. According to Mr Liive, four million euros have failed to have been earned per month, plus about a million monthly of direct costs – the plant is staffed with employees; to this add the constant investigations and fresh investments into technology upgrades.
Nevertheless: as the plant kicks into action, income before interests will be €50m a year. Provided that oil price stays between $100-110 a barrel, adds Mr Liive. «The investment will still pay off, even if we will have to wait for three years, earning €50m a year after that,» underlined Mr Liive.
Mr Kond said the engineers work till 9 pm, meaning they are at it full steam. Mr Liive will not deny: oil plant is priority for the group.
The infamous screw conveyors, indeed, were not seen by the journalists – these being covered up, the more so that the plant was forbidden to be photographed. Even so, one could behold the huge bolts securing the conveyors – having added after these started to leak.
Mr Liive said that as the plant was started, gas begun to leak from the conveyor casings, the conveyors themselves giving in – or bending – more than allowed. Now the problem ought to be fixed; even so, the work goes on to ensure the reinforcements are forceful enough.
The other problem openly shared by Eesti Energia is vibration. Mr Rattur explained that the engineers, specialists at gas and oil pipe «tremblings», we measuring the gas pipes with devices registering vibrations 1,000 times a second.
The pipes resemble any old ventilation pipe adorning city office roofs; however, at the plant, they serve to channel smoke at far larger pressures and temperatures – the ones drying the oil shale. The gases, in their turn, come from the little electric station boiler house attached to the plant. «It’s a design error, most probably,» said Mr Rattur.
Vibration experts advised that the diameter of pipes be enlarged. So that is what they did, and just finished. Now, excess vibration ought to be a thing of the past.
«In one mode or another, the plant has been working six weeks – all in all,» said Mr Rattur. «Vibration was the most time-consuming of the problems. Step by step, we are learning to operate the plant. We started by learning how to light the fire in the hearth.»
During the studies, 130 tonnes of oil has flowed into the containers. The initial drop of oil, however, eemrged at last Christmas – from limestone. Namely: as, at test launch, limestone left over at oil shale enrichment was let into the retort, bits of oil shale left in the waste let out the precious first drops.
How long till the money machine kicks into fill gear? They won’t tell – Eesti Energia chiefs no longer in the promise mode.