CVR says Coffeyville, Kansas refinery could be shut 4 weeks from fire

* Crude, vacuum unit work at Kansas refinery to be moved up

* Two catalyst changes in 2nd-half 2014 for Oklahoma refinery (Updates oil futures, share prices)

By Robert Gibbons

NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters) - CVR Refining LP said on Thursday that its 115,000-barrel-per-day Coffeyville, Kansas, refinery could be down four weeks after a July 29 fire in the facility's isomerization unit.

News (Other OTC: NWSAL - news) of the lengthy outage for the entire refinery sent U.S. crude futures prices tumbling to their lowest since March because the Kansas refinery is a big consumer of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, the benchmark deliverable against the light sweet crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

U.S. crude futures fell $2.10 to settle at $98.17 a barrel.

Damage to the isomerization unit, where the fire occurred, was "very limited," Jack Lipinski, CVR's chief executive officer said during a conference call, but damage to the distributed control and data systems forced the company to shut the entire refinery.

The fire affected one of two major data centers and to electrical cabling, Lipinski said.

"Other units are capable of running but unless the whole plant can run together it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to run minimal amounts of crude," Lipinski added.

During this downtime, CVR intends to accelerate some maintenance scheduled in 2014.

"We were planning a seven-day shut down of our number 2 crude unit and number 2 vacuum unit for decoking and unit cleanups during Q3 (third quarter)," said Lipinski.

"That'll be affected during this current outage."

Lipinski also said the company will "pull forward" some work slated for a scheduled turnaround in the fall of 2015.

This will include utility maintenance that can only be done when the entire facility is shut.

During the period the Coffeyville refinery is shut, CVR will be in the market selling some of the WTI crude from Midland, Texas, that is usually committed to Coffeyville, Lipinski told analysts.

CVR'S OKLAHOMA REFINERY

Two catalyst change outs are slated to be done during the second half of 2014 at its 70,000-bpd refinery in Wynnewood, Oklahoma.

"Whether its Q3 or Q4 or even is necessary, we're just anticipating it right now," said Lipinski.

CVR said it anticipates total crude throughput for its two refineries to average 165,000 to 175,000 bpd in the third quarter 2014, and Lipinski told analysts that the drop off in throughput from the 212,047 bpd in the second quarter would be related to the situation at Coffeyville.

RIN COSTS

Second-quarter cost for Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), or ethanol blending credits, was $29.1 million, Susan Ball, chief financial officer, told analysts. This was compared to $65.5 million in the same period in 2014.

CVR expects total 2014 RINs cost to be $100 million to $150 million.

RINs are paper credits used to meet quotas for blending biofuel into gasoline and diesel.

CVR Refining LP, based in Sugar Land, Texas, is an independent downstream energy limited partnership formed by CVR Energy Inc.

CVR Refining's shares fell 53 cents to $25.66 on Thursday. (Reporting by Robert Gibbons; Editing by Bernard Orr)