REFINERY NEWS ROUNDUP: Some maintenance ends in Europe, TAL shipments resume

London — Some maintenance has finished in Europe with refineries restarting but temporary closures remain in force at a number of plants, both full and partial.

The International Energy Agency expects improved oil products demand next year to result in 500,000 b/d higher throughput at European refiners after a 1.5 million b/d decline in 2020, with runs expected to remain below Q3 2020 levels until Q3 2021.

Separately, the Trans-Alpine pipeline (TAL), which ships crude oil from the Italian port of Trieste to refineries in Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, resumed operations the morning of Dec. 11 after problems due to heavy snow in the Alps through which it runs, according to sources. The pipeline had stopped shipping crude as power supply to a pumping station in Austria was cut, Germany's Bild newspaper reported. Miro, whose refinery in Karlsruhe is one of those that receives crude via TAL, said that following the interruption of supply it has "adjusted" its operations, but with the return of TAL to normal operations it would "advance our crude distillation accordingly". The interruption did not affect its supply of oil products. OMV, whose Schwechat and Burghausen refineries are fed by the pipeline, said it was ensuring security of supply, and declined to comment further. Gunvor's Ingolstadt refinery also declined to comment. Unipetrol, operator of the Kralupy refinery in the Czech Republic, said the plant was undergoing maintenance and, therefore, had no issues with crude supply.

** Total halted operations at its Donges refinery in France for economic reasons from Nov. 30 for the coming months. Meanwhile, there was a brief strike at the plant at the end of November as the union had been seeking clarification on the duration of the closures at the plant and an assurance that it would restart as soon as demand improved. According to trading sources, the shutdown is expected to last around a month and the refinery is likely to restart in January.

** Staff at the French Grandpuits voted to join a strike resulting in a blockade of product deliveries from the site as well as the nearby Gargenville oil terminal over Dec.10-12. This was the third strike since October when staff protested over the company's plans to convert the refinery into a bio plant. Total halted the crude distillation unit at Grandpuits Nov. 16 but the other units at the refinery remained in operation. The company decided to stop using the Ile-de-France pipeline (PLIF) that brings crude to its Grandpuits refinery from Le Havre. The decision has been taken to investigate indications of cracks, although no leak has been detected or reported. In September, Total announced that it would convert the refinery into a biofuels and plastics recycling complex, ending crude refining at the site in early 2021.

** UK's Petroineos refinery has started consultation with employees regarding its proposal to mothball CDU1 and the FCC. The two units "have been closed throughout the COVID pandemic due to significantly reduced local and international demand for fuels." The company proposes a smaller refining operation at Grangemouth where it will retain 450 jobs.

** Galp said it expects its halt of fuel production units at the smaller of its two Portuguese refineries in Porto to continue for most of the fourth quarter. The units were halted for a second time this year on Oct. 10 due to the impact of COVID-19 on fuel demand and long inventories.

** Cepsa's La Rabida refinery in Spain will keep two units -- Crude Unit 1 and Vacuum Unit 2 -- offline after maintenance in order to adapt to the current weak demand for refined products. Cepsa said it was carrying out maintenance on one of the two crude distillation units at the site, without saying when it would return.

** Croatia's Rijeka refinery will optimize its operations from November "for a few months" and during that period will "perform regular technological activities at process units such as catalyst regeneration and preparation of these plants for the new processing cycle in 2021 through regular maintenance work." Local media reported that the refinery will temporarily halt production between November and January due to reduced demand.

** Finland's Neste will shut down its Naantali refinery by the end of March 2021 as part of its restructuring. Operations at its Porvoo refinery will be revamped to focus on co-processing renewable and circular raw materials, it added.

** Gunvor Group said it would mothball its Antwerp refinery, but "will continue terminal activities, as well as further assess future development opportunities for the land and existing units." The refinery stopped crude processing at the end of May.

** Shell relaunched the sale of its Fredericia refinery in Denmark after suspending the sale in 2018.

** Total has agreed to sell its Lindsey refinery in the UK to fuel trading and marketing Prax Group, as the French oil major focuses on its integrated downstream assets and the coronavirus adds to the uncertainty over long-term demand for fuel.

** Spanish refiner Repsol took its fluid catalytic cracker at Corunna offline in April and had reported no change in the situation as of Oct. 2. At Spain's Bilbao the FCC was taken offline in April, and the company did not confirm its restart.

** Germany's Heide plant had "only slightly reduced its throughput" due to the end of the bitumen season, the refinery said Oct. 27. "In times of weak margins, this situation requires a special look at production that is still economical," the refinery said, adding it had achieved this by reducing the throughput slightly.

** Germany's Schwedt is still running at reduced runs, according to sources. Traders said the refinery had been running at around 80% since late September.

** Italy's Saras expects crude runs in Q4 at around 20 million barrels, with refining capacity running at about 70%-80% of the total.

** Turkey's Tupras has cut its expectations for 2020 in the light of changing market conditions due to COVID-19. Tupras said it was revising its anticipated 2020 production to 22 million mt from 24 million mt, with a capacity utilization of 75%-80%. Following its Q1 results, Tupras said it expected production for the year to be 28 million mt, but subsequently revised this down to 24 million mt.

** French road fuel deliveries in November fell 26.4% year on year to 2.922 billion liters, with a 23.6% slump in diesel consumption compounded by a 36.5% plunge in gasoline consumption, according to industry group UFIP, quoting data from the country's oil industry committee CPDP. A second lockdown was imposed in France on Oct. 29 to control the second wave of coronavirus infections. Albeit less strict than the first lockdown in the spring -- schools and nurseries remain open-- this lockdown lasted until Dec. 15. While non-essential shops already re-opened on Nov. 28, cafes, restaurants and bars will remain closed until at least Jan. 20, 2021.

** Italian refinery production in the first eight months of the year fell 12.9% year on year to 40.95 million mt, dragged down by crude refining, according to data released by Italian industry group Unione Petrolifera. Throughput of additives, oxygenates and biofuels gained 27.4% in the first eight months of the year to 1.12 mt, the association said. Refining throughput of partially processed crude that had been imported from abroad jumped 41.1% to 2.81 million mt in the period, the data showed. Standard crude throughput plunged 16.2% to 37.02 million mt in the first eight months of the year, UP said. The average run rate in the first eight months of the year was 70.4% of the 87.25 million mt/year full capacity.

** Turkey's diesel demand was up 12% year on year at 1.566 billion liters in November, according to energy ministry data. The rate of increase was significantly higher than the 4.5% recorded over the first 21 days of the month, and on the rises recorded in October (3.6%), September (5.9%), August (6.1%), July (7.5%) and June (8.2%), following the steep fall in demand in May (minus 28%) when much of Turkey was still partially locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, gasoline demand in November rose by 14% to 229.2 million liters, up on the 7.1% rise over the first three weeks of the month, and in October (13%) but down on September (19%). The sudden jump in sales in the last week of November is believed to be due to fluctuations in the value of the Turkish lira, which fell from 7.59 to the US dollar on Nov. 20 to 7.93 on Nov. 25, before recovering somewhat to 7.78 on Nov. 30. Retail fuel prices are pegged to the exchange rate and are adjusted as it changes. As result consumers tend to fill their tanks when the lira is stronger and retail prices lower.

** Israel's Bazan said that its refinery utilization and throughput were down both in Q3 and January-September "mainly due to adjustment of output

due to the decrease in demand for distillates and a decrease in refining margins that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic." The refinery ran at 73% utilization in Q3, down from 96% in the year-ago period, and at 81% in January-September, down from 96%. Meanwhile it processed 2.111 million mt of feedstock in Q3, compared with 2.661 million mt a year earlier, and 6.641 million mt in the nine months of 2020, down from 7.829 million mt. Bazan said that it "regularly reviews the need to adjust its production volumes and if possible, its product mix, to the demand and to market margins" which includes utilization rates and "if necessary" it "reduces the volume of gasoline imports, diverts certain sales from the domestic market to export markets, and adjusts its inventory levels."

NEW AND ONGOING MAINTENANCE

FUTURE MAINTENANCE

Near-term maintenance

New and revised entries

** Following a closure of a unit at France's Lavera, there has been flaring, according to a company statement. Traders also reported an outage at the refinery although details have not been confirmed.

The company was not available to comment.

** Petronor said Dec. 10 that it will restart the alkylation unit AK3 in plant 3 of Bilbao which was taken offline Oct. 19 for maintenance work. Meanwhile Petronor said Dec. 11 it was to halt its N2 naphtha desulfurization unit in Plant 2, without saying how long the unit would be offline. The company halted its number 2 crude distillation on Nov. 20 in reaction to weaker market conditions. Petronor also said Dec. 11 it was restarting the CG6 co-generation unit, the energy recovery unit and the turbo expander associated with the fluid catalytic cracker.

** Czech Kralupy refinery is currently undergoing maintenance shutdown, the company said Dec. 10. Due to the shutdown it was not affected by crude supply problems along the Trans-Alpine pipeline (TAL).

** Italy's Livorno refinery will restart around mid-December after the complex was placed offline for the duration of a maintenance cycle on its thermo-electric unit, the company said. The works have affected the plant's gasoline and diesel refining activities, though its lubricant production remained operational, the company spokesperson said. The maintenance started end-November, according to information provided by a source close to the company earlier this week.

** Tupras will halt production at its Izmir refinery between Jan. 1 and Feb. 28 for maintenance, the company said in a disclosure to the Istanbul stock exchange. The company did not specify in the disclosure exactly what maintenance would be carried out. But in a teleconference presentation published following its third-quarter results, the company listed a number of planned maintenance projects that had been scheduled for Q4 2020 and all but one of which had been postponed to unspecified periods in 2021. These included work on the U400 FCC unit, planned to take six weeks staring in Q4, as well as work on the U9200 CCR unit planned to take seven weeks, the U9600 Isomerisation unit planned to take eight weeks, and the U9900 MQD unit planned to take seven weeks. Tupras said that it did not anticipate any effect on its sales during the shutdown as it planned to compensate for lost production by utilizing its existing stocks and continuing production at its other three refineries.

** Major shutdown of the Godorf site at the Rheinland refinery is now safely completed with the restart taking place since Dec. 4. The plant has been halting units since the end of October for full maintenance. Works involved replacing burners for process furances and a complete overhaul of the two main feeder transformers. The refinery recently completed maintenance on the Wesseling site. The refinery consists of the Wesseling (south) and Godorf (north) sites, which have combined capacity of 327,000 b/d.

** Shell's Pernis refinery in the Netherlands has completed works which were ongoing on one unit from mid-October. Pernis completed major maintenance in late July. It started those works in mid-April, bringing them forward from the original plan for maintenance to start May 4 through June.

** Repsol said it has concluded a planned maintenance on a number of units that started Oct. 31, a company spokesman told S&P Global Platts Dec. 4, without adding details. The company broadened a planned turnaround of its hydrocracker to carry out maintenance on a number of other units, taking advantage of the current market situation. The company did not specify which units had been affected, but a report in local daily Mi Ciudad Real citing company sources said other units affected included the fluid catalytic cracker, which had been working at minimum levels due to pandemic restrictions on travel, the vacuum unit and the coker. The halt also allowed some maintenance work in Crude Unit 2 or the alkylation unit, which together meant halting 80% of the refinery, the paper said. Repsol previously said it planned to carry out an upgrade of its 102,000 mt/year ethylene olefins unit during a planned maintenance of the cracker and chemical derivative plants at the end of 2020, but did not confirm if this work was included.

** Russian energy group Lukoil's ISAB refinery in Sicily has postponed its restart scheduled for Dec. 15 after the completion of a two-month maintenance cycle that started on Oct. 15, sources close to the refinery said. It's unclear when the refinery would be back online, the sources said, though the topping and IGCC cogen unit in the southern section of the refinery could be kept offline until March 2021, according to one of the sources. The two months of maintenance and upgrade works carried out on the plant were focused on the southern section of the refinery and included in-depth work on the refinery's IGCC, which generates electric energy and has capacity of 549 MW. A new compressor plant was also added to the refinery to reduce its environmental impact. ISAB is made up of two refineries connected by a pipeline. The north and south plants operate as a single refinery after the two separate units were integrated in 2007.

Existing entries

** Turkey's Tupras confirmed in November that it was planning to go ahead with some refinery maintenance work this year having previously announced that all planned maintenance would be postponed to 2021. During Q4 work is planned on the Plt 5 crude and vacuum unit and the Plt 47 hydrocracker at the company's Izmit refinery, lasting for two weeks. Also planned is work on the Plt 100/1000 crude and vacuum unit at Batman slated to start in Q4 and continue for eight weeks, into Q1 2021.

** General maintenance at Germany's Leuna will be carried out in Q2 2021, although the exact timing is yet to be confirmed, the company said Oct. 19. The maintenance and an upgrade which had been scheduled for this autumn had been postponed "due to the ongoing pandemic and the resulting restrictions on travel and transport of goods, as well as the impact on international supply chains," the company said earlier this year. The maintenance had been planned to take placed over six weeks, S&P Global Platts reported previously. Total said in 2019 it would invest Eur150 million in the Leuna refinery over 2020-21 to reduce production of heavy products as demand decreased and increase production of methanol, a key feedstock for the chemical industry. The project will deepen the integration of refining and petrochemical operations and increase the competitiveness of the plant, Total said at the time. Methanol production will increase by 20% as a result of higher output from the visbreaker unit and an upgrade of the POX/methanol plant. Work was due to continue until 2021, with the bulk carried out during a major shutdown of the refinery in 2020, which will also cost around Eur150 million.

** Spain's La Rabida will keep two units at the refinery -- crude unit 1 and vacuum unit 2 -- offline once they conclude their current maintenance in order to adapt to the current weak demand for refined products, it said Oct. 8. Cepsa told S&P Global Platts Sept. 30 that it was carrying out maintenance on one of the two crude distillation units at the site, without saying when it would return or whether other units were affected. However, the two units will not immediately return. Instead, the company said it will periodically re-evaluate the market condition to decide when to bring the units back online while it is starting temporary lay-off discussions with workers.

** Croatia's Rijeka refinery will be optimizing its operations from November "for a few months" and during that period will "perform regular technological activities at process units such as catalyst regeneration and preparation of these plants for the new processing cycle in 2021 through regular maintenance work," the company said late Oct. 7. Earlier local media reported that the refinery will temporarily halt production between November and January due to reduced demand caused by the spring lockdown and a weak tourist season.

** Some units at the Scholven part of Germany's Gelsenkirchen refinery will halt for planned maintenance from mid-October, the refinery said. The maintenance, which had been initially planned for April, has been postponed due to the coronavirus lockdown. It is expected to last around eight weeks.

** API's refinery in the Italian coastal town of Falconara Marittima is placing its U2500 desulfurization unit offline for maintenance and upgrade works.

** Two planned maintenances at the Castellon refinery is eastern Spain have been pushed back, with no fixed date for when they will now go ahead. The first was previously scheduled for May and to last two to three weeks, affecting two distillation units, the powerformer 1 and the HVN. A second maintenance, initially due for November for two to three weeks, affecting one conversion unit (treatment plant) and the 1.4 million mt/year coker, has been pushed back into 2021.

** France's Gonfreville is working at around 50% capacity after its CDU was damaged in december 2019.

** Eni's Sannazzaro de Burgondi refinery in northern Italy started another cycle of maintenance and upgrade works, even as a decision on when to reactivate its Eni slurry technology (EST) unit, which has been offline since a 2016 fire, is still outstanding. The works being carried out are not the series of works planned for the EST unit that had previously been suspended.

** The Canary Islands' only refinery on Tenerife will be permanently closed in the long term. There has been no production since 2014. Cepsa will install some logistics and storage facilities at the site, amid a wider regeneration project.

Future

Existing entries

** Italy's Milazzo refinery will place its LC Finer unit offline when it carries out wide-scale maintenance work at the plant in the first quarter of 2021, a source close to the refinery said. No information was available on which other units would be involved in the upgrades or how long the works would last. The maintenance in question was originally scheduled for 2019 and has been postponed various times. Milazzo is also scheduled to carry out maintenance works on its diesel plants in the second quarter of 2021. Around half of the refinery's plants will be involved. The works were originally planned for October 2020 but were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent drop in demand for refined products, which led Milazzo to cancel all but necessary maintenance and investment works in 2020. Works would have included its turboexpander plant, according to sources close to the refinery. The maintenance will likely take place in April and May next year, according to one source. Another person close to the refinery said it would take place between the first and the second quarter of 2021 "as long as market conditions permit this." ** Valero said that it carried out FCC works at UK's Pembroke in Q2 which had been originally planned as part of a 2021 turnaround.

** Czech Unipetrol said that following the turnaround at its Litvinov plant in Q2'20 the refinery has prepared production for a new four-year cycle. Thus the next turnaround is due in 2024.

** Lukoil's Neftochim refinery in Burgas, Bulgaria, will be carrying out major works in 2021, including atmospheric vacuum unit 1, atmospheric vacuum units 2, atmospheric vacuum distillation 2, FCC, hydrotreatment, hydrocracker, according to company tender documents. The refinery typically carries out works around February-March.

** With its 2020 maintenance, Romania's Petromidia and the petrochemical division "will align with the new operating strategy, with a general turnaround scheduled for 4 years and technological shutdowns scheduled for 2 years," the company said.

** Finland's Neste said that its Porvoo refinery's major turnaround in 2020 is postponed to 2021 and would be carried in phases. The company had planned works for the second quarter of this year, but had to postpone them due to the coronavirus pandemic.

** Germany's Mineraloelraffinerie Oberrhein (Miro) will carry out a major turnaround in 2021. It will invest Eur300 million, with two-thirds going on new projects and a third for upgrading the existing plants during the turnaround.

** Two months of maintenance at the Sarpom refinery in Trecate, Italy, originally scheduled for October 2019 have been pushed back to 2021. Details on which units at the refinery will be upgraded as part of the maintenance -- of the kind needed every 3-4 years -- had yet to emerge.

** The Holborn refinery near Hamburg, northern Germany, plans its next turnaround in 2023. Its previous maintenance was in the autumn of 2018. The refinery carries out major works every five years.

** The next major maintenance at Poland's Gdansk is planned for spring 2021.

** Repsol's refinery at Puertollano in central Spain will carry out an upgrade of its olefins unit as part of planned maintenance of the cracker and chemical derivative plants at the end of 2020.

** The next major turnaround at Preem's Gothenburg refinery in Sweden will be in 2021.

** Romania's Petrobrazi will undergo its next big turnaround in 2022.