Petroecuador halts Esmeraldas refinery on quake

QUITO, April 17 (Reuters) -- Ecuador's 110,000-bpd Esmeraldas refinery remained down on Sunday as a precautionary measure though will likely soon restart after a major earthquake in the OPEC nation that killed at least 235 people, the state oil company said.

Petroecuador said it would assess when to restart operations during the day after verifying that no infrastructure was damaged by the 7.8 magnitude quake which struck off the country's Pacific coast on Saturday.

"In the course of the day, technicians will determine the start of operations," the company said in a statement.

"The impact of the quake caused four of the 10 storage tanks to overflow and so a cleanup and recovery has begun."

Other installations were working normally, it added, and state officials said crude production was unaffected.