UPDATE 1-Valero shuts Texas hydrocracker to fix leak

(Recasts with company comment, changes dateline from SINGAPORE)

NEW YORK Oct 23 (Reuters) - Top U.S. refiner Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) said on Friday it was shutting a 36,000 barrel per day hydrocracker at the west plant of its 315,000 bpd Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery to fix a leak.

Spokesman Bill Day told Reuters a company environmental filing early Friday citing "planned maintenance following shutdown at Complex 1" is the same as an announcement late Thursday on the west plant hydrocracker unit outage.

The unit was originally shut due to a small fire on Oct. 7 then began restarting last Sunday before the latest outage.

"During the restart of the unit, a leak was discovered, so the unit is in the process of being shut down again to repair the leak," Day told Reuters on Friday.

He said there was no estimate no how long the repair work would last.

Although the new environmental filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality also concerned the same hydrocracker unit repair, it was made for a "different emissions reporting timeline," the spokesman added.

The west plant unit is a gasoil hydrocracker, which uses hydrogen under high pressure to increase the yield of motor fuel from feedstocks. (Reporting by Haitham Haddadin and Erwin Seba in the United States; Judy Hua in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy)