Parkland has temporarily paused the restart of its Burnaby refinery after an "issue" that resulted in an acrid stench blanketing parts of Metro Vancouver Sunday.
"Due to recent extreme cold weather, we proactively initiated steps to pause processing operations at the refinery," refinery vice-president and general manager Alex Coles said in a news release Wednesday afternoon. "While restarting, we encountered an issue with a processing unit on Jan. 21, 2024. As a result, we paused the restart, and the refinery's processing operations remain temporarily shut down."
The refinery's shipping, terminal and rack activities remain operational, according to the release, enabling refined fuels to be offloaded from ships and rail directly into the refinery, where they can be "safely stored and reliably distributed to customers."
Parkland expects the refinery will return to normal operations in about four weeks.
On its Burnaby Refinery website, Parkland warned local residents that it will be conducting "a controlled and necessary operational procedure as the first step in the safe restart of the refinery" starting Thursday morning.
The company said residents may notice "increased odour, flaring, and visible smoke over the next few days."
"We are working closely with our regulators and stakeholders as we advance this procedure, and are taking extra precautionary steps by enlisting third-party air monitoring to supplement the systems currently in place," stated the notice.
Metro Vancouver said it was sending its mobile air monitoring unit (MAMU) to a "site nearby" in advance of Parkland’s work and will be "closely monitoring" as the refinery conducts the operation.
"MAMU can monitor for specific pollutants in addition to what is detected by our regular monitoring network," stated a post on the regional government's Twitter/X account.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
Email [email protected]
