Shell to restart gasoline unit April 21 -sources

SINGAPORE, April 9 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) is expected to restart a 33,000 barrels per day long residue catalytic cracker at its Singapore refinery on April 21, following an outage last week due to catalyst problems, industry sources said on Thursday.

"The unit went down about a week ago because it wasn't receiving the correct amount of catalysts into the system. It is expected to be restarted after about two weeks from the start of the shutdown," a source close to the refinery said.

The unit cracks straight-run residues into gasoline and fuel oil using catalysts at the oil major's 500,000-bpd refining complex on Bukom island.

The unit was shut for four months from end-September 2007 after one of its mechanical components, known as the cyclone, had melted due to extreme temperatures and needed to be replaced. (Reporting by Yaw Yan Chong, editing by Ramthan Hussain)