Consumables in Refinery Maintenance Works
During a refinery shutdown, a wide range of consumable items are required to support maintenance, overhaul, and turnaround activities. These consumables are necessary to ensure safety, efficiency, and the timely execution of the shutdown plan. Consumables form a substantial part of a refinery shutdown budget. Some low-cost, high-volume items (gloves, nuts/bolts) might only be of small price each. Specialized items (gaskets, testing kits) can cost much more per unit.
Overall shutdown maintenance costs—of which consumables are a component—may account for about 5–10% of the total annual maintenance budget for a refinery. Effective shutdown planning can reduce overall maintenance costs by 30–50% compared to poorly planned outages, largely through better resource coordination and advanced procurement.
Common Consumable Items in Refinery Shutdown
Cleaning Agents and Chemicals: Steam and nitrogen are widely used for cleaning and purging equipment to remove hydrocarbons before maintenance begins. Specialized solvents and detergents for equipment cleaning.
Gaskets and Blind Flanges: Blind gaskets of various sizes are used to isolate equipment and plant sections during shutdown for safe maintenance. Replacement gaskets and seals for valves, pumps, heat exchangers, and vessels.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): Safety gloves, helmets, suits, goggles, masks, and earplugs for all personnel involved in shutdown activities.
Lubricants and Greases: Used for maintenance and servicing of moving parts, pumps, motors, and rotating equipment.
Welding and Cutting Supplies: Electrodes and gases (oxygen, acetylene, argon) are required for welding, cutting, and fabrication.
Small Maintenance Tools and Fasteners: Nuts, bolts, washers, screws, anchors — for replacing worn or faulty hardware during repairs and replacements.
Filtration Materials: Filters for fuel, oil, air, and process fluids—often replaced during maintenance.
Testing Materials: Pressure test kits, leak detection fluids, calibration gases, and devices for safety and integrity tests.
Paints, Coatings, and Sealants: For re-coating surfaces after cleaning, repairing, or replacing components.
Consumables for Electrical and Instrumentation Work: Fuses, insulation tapes, connectors, cables, terminal blocks, and batteries.
Miscellaneous Supplies: Cleaning rags, buckets, tapes, tags for marking, and labelling equipment. Fire extinguishing materials and first aid kits.
How Consumables Are Managed
A detailed Bill of Materials (BOM) is prepared in advance, listing all consumable items and spare parts anticipated for the shutdown. The procurement and warehouse teams ensure that all required consumables are stocked and replenish any shortages before the shutdown begins.
Most refineries also use advanced planning and inventory management systems to optimize the supply of consumables for shutdowns, ensuring uninterrupted progress in critical maintenance work. Consumable requirements can vary with the type and scale of shutdown activities, but the items listed above remain essential across refineries globally.
Typical costs and logistics for shutdown consumables in a refinery are significant and require careful management, planning, and coordination. Here’s an overview of what’s commonly involved:
Logistics of Consumables
Advance Planning is essential. Planners develop detailed lists of all required consumables and coordinate their delivery with the shutdown schedule. Procurement works weeks to months before shutdown, ensuring necessary quantities are ordered, delivered, and allocated appropriately.
Warehousing & Storage: Consumables need secure, accessible storage on-site; special items may require controlled environments.
Kitting: Items are often pre-packed for specific work packages to speed up field operations.
Distribution: Timely delivery from the warehouse to the work site is coordinated with activity schedules.
Supplier Coordination for just-in-time delivery or replenishment if quantities run short.
Documentation: Careful tracking of stock used, stock remaining, and restocking needs throughout the shutdown.
Hazardous consumables require specialized storage, handling, and disposal logistics. Accuracy in work scope planning reduces excess ordering and emergency procurement, lowering costs. High automation, clear process documentation, and well-integrated schedules help minimize logistical delays and overstocking. Efficient management and logistics of shutdown consumables not only control costs but also minimize delays and support effective, safe maintenance execution.
Consumables and Costing
Shutdown consumables are typically classified as indirect costs rather than direct costs. This is because consumables such as welding rods, cleaning chemicals, safety equipment, lubricants, PPE, and other materials are typically used across multiple activities and jobs during a shutdown, making it challenging to attribute their usage to a specific plant item or piece of equipment.
Direct costs are those that can be directly attributed to a specific plant item, piece of equipment, or job—such as the replacement of a pipe or the installation of a new pump for a particular unit.
Indirect costs are not easily attributable to a specific job, plant item, or unit. Consumables are often grouped here because:
Their usage is spread across many tasks and workers. Tracking actual utilization per item or unit is usually impractical. Accounting practices commonly list bulk materials and general-purpose items (like consumables) in the indirect cost category. Consumables are included as part of the operational overheads for the shutdown, further supporting their classification as indirect rather than direct costs in most refinery maintenance cost structures.