BANGKOK, April 1 (Reuters) - Most Thai oil refineries are
dealing with the Year 2000 computer bug and are expected to be
fully millennium compliant by the end of the second quarter,
industry sources said on Thursday.
Testing is in the final stages and refinery operations are
unlikely to be interrupted, they told Reuters.
Officials at Thai Oil, the country's biggest refinery with
a capacity of 220,000 barrels per day (bpd), said the debt
problem the company was facing would not affect the process of
converting to Year 2000-compliant systems.
"Thai Oil began addressing the issue as early as May 1997.
We are now about 75 percent complete, and will be compliant by
June," said Kornkrit Suksangium, head of Information Technology
at the refiner.
The cost of making the refinery Y2K safe was estimated at
125 million baht ($3.3 million), officials said.
Thailand has five oil refineries and one condensate
splitter with a combined capacity of 825,000 bpd.
Most refineries surveyed by Reuters said their distribution
control, which is one of the most critical refinery components,
had been made compliant.
Refineries followed a similar methodology, starting with an
awareness programme, followed by inventory checking to evaluate
the systems and components of the refinery.
The next step was a business impact assessment digest in
which the refineries look at the progress of the compliance by
parties with which they interact such as suppliers and vendors.
The final stage, which most Thai refineries are now in, is
the remediation process which requires the refineries to take
all the components and systems that are not compliant and make
them compliant by putting in new software or hardware.
Bangchak Petroleum Plc <BCP.BK>, which runs a 120,000 bpd
refinery, said most of its systems were now compliant and the
full process was expected to be completed by June or July at
the latest.
John Etherington, Y2K project manager at Star Petroleum
Refining Co (SPRC), said the company's 130,000 bpd refinery
would also be fully Y2K compliant by June or July.
The refinery is 64 percent owned by Caltex <CHV.N> <TX.N>.
Etherington put the bill of converting Star to Year
2000-compliant systems at $3.5 million.
"The testing will not interrupt operations. We are
fortunate that the refinery was shut down for maintenance in
November. We were able to do some testing on key components
(REUTERS) Thai oil refineries seen fully Y2K compliant
Thai oil refineries seen fully Y2K compliant
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