REFINERY NEWS ROUNDUP: Incidents in Europe having limited impact

Incidents at refineries over the past weeks have been having only a limited impact on operations.

** Spain's Bilbao refinery was operating normally, the company said Aug. 24. The refinery had a fire incident in late July in the area of Plant 1 which likely affected a crude distillation unit, according to the refinery and market sources. According to trading sources, a CDU and some secondary units have been down but have since restarted.

** A leak of isomerate, a gasoline blendstock, has been reported at France's Lavera Aug. 24, according to local media. The leak, which has been isolated, does not pose any danger, the reports said, citing local authorities.

** The FCC at TotalEnergies' Antwerp remained offline, market sources said Aug. 24. The company, which was not available to comment, had said previously that equipment at the refinery had been "made safe, and the refinery's other facilities are operational" following a fire on the night of Aug. 6 that was quickly brought under control, with no injuries or environmental impact.

** The POX unit at Germany's Leuna refinery is currently offline while the cause of an incident on Aug. 23 is investigated, the refinery said Aug. 24. The incident occurred in the late-afternoon and involved smoke development at the unit. "No hazardous levels could be measured and there were no injuries in the course of the incident," the refinery said.

Separately, European refiners continue to seek alternative feedstocks to Russian crude.

** The Bulgarian government has discussed the impact and procedures for an early ban on the import of Russian crude and oil products before the country's EU derogation on buying Moscow's oil ends next year. Bulgaria has a two-year exemption from the EU's embargo on Russian oil to continue buying Russian crude until December 2024. The crude supplies the Russian company Lukoil's Neftohim refinery near the Black Sea port of Burgas.

** Slovak oil refiner Slovnaft said Aug. 31 it was seeking a year-long extension of its exemption to EU sanctions on Russia that allow it to export motor fuels produced from Russian oil to the neighboring Czech Republic. The current exemption for Czech exports of diesel and gasoline from Slovnaft's 122,000 b/d Bratislava refinery will end on Dec. 5, according to the EU agreement hammered out on May 31, 2022. Slovnaft, part of Hungary's MOL group, says it needs more time to make the technological changes to refine oil from non-Russian suppliers and warns that cutting off the Czech diesel and gasoline exports could risk motor fuel shortages throughout Central Europe.

Meanwhile Q2 throughput has been affected at some plants by lower margins or maintenance but remained high at others.

** Poland's largest refiner PKN Orlen has reported higher second-quarter throughput and utilization at its refineries. Its Q2 overall throughput increased 2.3% on the year to 9.5 million mt following the acquisition of the country's second-largest refiner, Grupa Lotos, in August last year. Utilization of PKN's refineries over April-June, meanwhile, rose 7 percentage points to 90%, the company said in a Q2 results presentation.

Throughput at Plock fell 1 million mt on the year due to maintenance shutdowns of the CDU III, FCC II, Hydrocracking and Hydrogen II units and H-Oil. As a result, utilization of the Plock and Gdansk refineries fell 18 percentage points on the year to 89%.

Throughput at PKN's Czech Unipetrol refineries, meanwhile, was marginally up by 0.2% to 1.9 million mt because of a "lack of cyclical maintenance shutdown in Kralupy" after Q1 2022. Utilization was up by 10 percentage points at 87%.

Lithuania's Orlen Lietuva refinery in Mazeikiai said Aug. 24 that it ran at 89% utilization at Q2, and processed over 2.3 million mt of feedstocks, a "significant improvement" from the year-ago quarter when the refinery units were halted for turnaround and the refinery operated at half of its capacity.

The refinery, also known as Mazeikiu, also reported a 62% growth of seaborne sales and 38% growth of sales to inland markets amid a "recovery" of the Ukrainian market "where increase in the product sales is three times higher than during the same quarter last year."

** Greece's Motor Oil Hellas reduced throughput at its Corinth refinery to 5.725 million mt in the first half of the year, compared with 6.773 million mt in the respective period in 2022 due to a scheduled maintenance. The turnaround was "executed in almost all" of the refinery units, which were halted in a staggered way between early May and mid-July. In Q2 its processed volume was 2.276 million mt, down from 3.402 million mt. The maintenance involved the major crude distillation unit, the hydrocracker complex, the hydrotreating diesel unit, the vacuum distillation unit and the lubes unit. The maintenance lasted longest at the largest of the two crude distillation units, which was halted for 40 days. The crude unit came back in operation in the middle of July. During the maintenance a revamping was carried out on the major topping unit as a result of which the refinery's operating capacity increased to 200,000 b/d from 185,000 b/d previously, it said.

The company added that no further maintenance will take place for the rest of this year. It also said during a conference call that such maintenance only takes place once every four or five years.

** Greece's Helleniq Energy, formerly Hellenic Petroleum, said Aug. 31 that its refineries operated at higher utilization in Q2 compared with the corresponding year-ago quarter. It reported 101% utilization in Q2 versus 91% last year. Production was 13% higher on the year at 3.6 million mt as Aspropyrgos and Elefsis had carried out turnarounds in the year-ago quarter and this year's maintenance was "much lighter," it said. The refinery carried out "small maintenance" at Elefsis in the second quarter and is planning a week of maintenance on some units at Aspropyrgos in September, it said.

Throughput at the Aspropyrgos refinery totaled 1.870 million mt in the second quarter, while Elefsis processed 1.129 million mt and Thessaloniki 989,000 mt.

The company noted that the "benefits of improved operations and increased availability of all 3 refineries" have been limited by weaker benchmark margin environment. In the second quarter of 2023, "refining margins declined significantly compared both to the 2Q22 historic-highs, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and to 1Q23, Helleniq said.

However, in July and August the margins are "at least" $10/b higher than the Q2 average, company executives said during a conference call to discuss the quarterly results.

** Israel's Bazan reported 84% utilization at its Haifa refinery in the second quarter of 2023, down from 98% in the year-ago quarter due to "planned maintenance work that was completed in second quarter of 2023." The maintenance involved CDU 4. Utilization was 88% in the first half of the year, down from 96% in H1 2022.

** Romania's Rompetrol said its Petromidia refinery processed 1.403 million mt of feedstocks in the second quarter, up 5% year on year, and 2.681 million mt in the first half of 2023, up 16% year on year. The company reported strong results "against the background of a higher degree of utilization of the Petromidia and Vega refineries, compared to the same period last year."

** Spanish refinery throughput in the first half of 2023 fell 6% year on year to 1.22 million b/d, reserve corporation CORES said Aug. 16, as benchmark margins narrowed from previous records and operators carried out maintenance. The figure meant an operating rate of 81% in the period, down from an 86% rate in the 2022 period. Spain has nine operational refineries with a combined 1.5 million b/d capacity.

** Production from Turkey's five refineries in June totaled 3.174 million mt, up 13% on the month but down 5% on the year, data from Turkey's energy regulator EPDK showed. Output from Tupras' three main refineries which refine imported crude rose in June, with output from its 227,000 b/d Izmit plant at 777,000 mt, up 46.4% on May and 22.2% on June 2022; from 239,000 b/d Izmir at 876,000 mt, up 7.1% on the month but down 6.6% year on year; and from its 108,000 b/d Kirikkale plant 356,000 mt, up 30.4% on May but down 6.6% on the year. The sharp rise in production at these plants follows the completion of maintenance work during the first half of the year. Output from Tupras' Batman plant, which refines Turkish crude, was 76,000 mt, down 1.2% on the month but up 1.3% on the year. Output from Azerbaijani state energy group Socar's Star refinery was 1.097 million mt, down 1.8% on May but up 14.5% year on year.

** In other news, the Midia Marine Terminal, which belongs to the KMG International Group and ensures crude oil supply to the Petromidia refinery, has completed a planned turnaround and crude oil unloading has begun, Rompetrol said Sept. 1. The first vessels, which were being unloaded this week, have a total of almost 250,000 mt to deliver to the refinery. The works, which started Aug. 7, had been due to last about three weeks.

** Galp Energia's Matosinhos refinery, halted in December 2020, will start being dismantled as soon as October, Portuguese news site Jornal de Noticias reported Aug. 30. Another market source said the date was in line with Galp's target, but dependent of some administrative procedures. The company declined to comment on the report Aug. 30. Operations at Matosinhos were officially discontinued in December 2020.

New and ongoing maintenance

New and revised entries

** The UK's Fawley refinery in southern England has completed planned maintenance on a unit and the associated flaring has stopped, the company said Aug. 31. The refinery had earlier reported increased noise while an unidentified unit was undergoing maintenance, which has been running longer than expected. Earlier in August, the refinery reported noise associated with the restart of a unit.

** BP's Castellon refinery, near Valencia, will carry out maintenance during October, according to industrial sources. The work was due to start after the long weekend following a national holiday Oct. 12, according to one source. The sources did not specify which units would be involved nor the length of the outage.

** The UK Pembroke refinery was planning partial works, according to market sources. The refinery carried out some partial works in the spring.

** The UK's Stanlow refinery has deferred planned maintenance on concerns about a potential strike, the GMB labor union said Aug. 18. Works which had been planned for this year have been "shifted" to 2024 as workers due to be involved in it "are currently in dispute with their employer" over a pay deal for 2024 and 2025, the union said.

** Austria-based OMV said Aug. 16 that routine maintenance work at the petrochemical and refining units of the Schwechat refinery has been completed successfully. The turnaround, which began at the start of June, involved cleaning, inspection and maintenance as well as modernization of the petrochemical and refining units. The refinery is fully operational again, it said. During the maintenance work, which affected the ethylene and butadiene plant and the catalytic cracker, the rest of the refinery was operating "almost at full capacity" after being inspected in 2022, OMV said.

** Germany's Mineraloelraffinerie Oberrhein (MiRo) refinery is planning partial maintenance in the autumn, most likely around October, according to market sources. The works are expected to last around one month and will most likely affect the gasoline units.

** Romania's Rompetrol said that the diesel mild hydrocracker at its Petromidia refinery, where a fire occurred June 21, remains offline, with repairs underway, although all other installations are in operation and "Rompetrol Rafinare continues to provide the oil products needed on the Romanian market." The unit is expected to be restarted in the autumn.

** The turnaround at Germany's Gelsenkirchen refinery has started as scheduled, the company said Sept. 1. The maintenance was due to start maintenance at the beginning of September. The entire plant in Horst and a small part of Scholven will be offline for several weeks. The refinery comprises the Horst and Scholven sites, with the latter accounting for around two-thirds of total capacity.

Existing entries

** France's Fos refinery is planning a major maintenance at the beginning of 2024 for which it has commenced preparations, according to media reports.

** Tupras confirmed in its H1 report that the bulk of the heavy maintenance program for 2023 had been completed, or in the case of the crude oil, vacuum and HYC units at 239,000 b/d Izmir plant postponed. The company added that periodic maintenance of the crude oil and vacuum unit, the desulfurizer and the CCR unit at the company's main 227,000 b/d Izmit refinery had also been completed, with only work on the fluid catalytic cracker still ongoing. Work on the crude and vacuum units at 28,000 b/d Batman refinery is scheduled to be conducted over nine weeks in the fourth quarter.

** Denmark's Crossbridge Energy Fredericia refinery was carrying out partial maintenance which will result in its running at reduced capacity, it said Aug. 9. The works, which involves cleaning and maintenance of several units, started Aug. 2. The refinery carried out some maintenance works earlier this year. Several units were halted for a few days from April 6.

** Portugal's Galp plans to carry out work on its atmospheric distillation unit and FCC in Q4, both of which were previously offline in Q4 2022. Galp also carried out a scheduled turnaround of its hydrocracker in Q1.

** A hydrodesulfurization unit at Poland's Plock will undergo maintenance shutdown throughout this year, PKN said. It was halted September 2022 after a fire, which started after the residue (gudron) hydrodesulfurization unit was restarted following maintenance.

** Turkey's Star refinery will undergo a full maintenance shutdown in 2024, an official from Socar's Turkish subsidiary Socar Turkiye said June 13. The official was unable to say when exactly the shutdown will be conducted or how long it will last. Previously, Anar Mammadov, the head of Socar Turkiye's Refinery and Petrochemical Business Unit, told reporters that the planned shutdown would last 45-60 days and would be the first halting of production at the plant since the refinery was fully commissioned in 2019. Mammadov said one of the goals of the shutdown was take additional measures which would limit the frequency of future maintenance shutdowns to once every five years. Previously, Socar Turkey CEO Elchin Ibadov said Star had operated at 113% capacity utilization during 2022, producing 11.3 million mt of products, 13% over the plant's 10 million mt boilerplate capacity.

** Eni's Sannazzaro's slurry technology (EST) unit, taken offline following a fire in 2016 and originally scheduled to be reactivated after maintenance and fire restoration work was carried out some 18 months after the fire, has remained offline.

** The Holborn refinery near Hamburg, northern Germany, said its next turnaround will take place in September and October. Its previous maintenance was in the autumn of 2018.

** Sweden's Gothenburg plant will have maintenance in the autumn of 2023.

** Shell plans to end crude processing at the Wesseling site within the Rhineland refining complex in 2025 as the facilities are repurposed for non-fossil fuel feedstocks and renewable hydrogen production. Shell outlined plans for the facility to take a variety of new biogenic and waste feedstocks, underlining no final investment decision had yet been taken, and crude processing would still take place at the adjoining Godorf site. The Wesseling portion of the Rhineland refinery accounts for half the overall refining capacity, or 8 million mt/year.

** Czech Unipetrol said that following the turnaround at its Litvinov plant in Q2 2020, the refinery has prepared production for a new four-year cycle. Thus, the next turnaround was due in 2024.