REFINERY NEWS ROUNDUP: Maintenance, run cuts, closures in focus in Europe

Maintenance works are starting at a number of refineries in Europe as demand for products and margins remain under pressure.

Some plants have also decided to halt fully or keep units offline while others reduce throughput.

**Galp has stopped fuel production at the smaller of its two Portuguese refineries at Porto since Oct. 10, the company said. As a result of the COVID-19 impact fuel production has halted at the site for a second time this year, the company confirmed. The company reported a negative benchmark refining margin in Q3, averaging minus 70 cents/b compared to Q2’s average of $1.80/b and Q3 2019’s average of $3.90/b, citing an “extremely weak distillate cracks environment during the period.” The refinery was previously halted under similar circumstances in April as fuel demand was crippled by pandemic measures impacting transport causing stock levels to reach full. In that case, the refinery was halted for around three months, restarting in mid July.

** Italy’s Sarroch refinery said it will operate at minimal levels in October and November to offset the effects of a drop in refining margins over the past few past months as part of a wider cost-cutting program it is introducing, a statement released Oct. 12 by plant owner Saras said. The plan includes a reduction in previously planned maintenance, although all units required for a recovery in crude demand now expected for 2021 would be kept operational. In addition, a “drastic” reduction in 2021 investment plans was announced in the statement, without any further detail being provided. Some 1,378 employees will be placed on a temporary layoff scheme through mid-2021. Refinery electricity generation will remain unaffected by the measures, Saras said. Saras said the planned cost-cutting measures were to offset the failure of demand to recover in the second half of 2020 as expected, with the situation having worsened following a recent fresh wave of coronavirus infections.

** Spain’s La Rabida will keep two units at the refinery — fuel 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 layoff 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. The company is not considering the closure of the refinery, and is continuing with the heavy residue upgrade, which includes building a delayed coker. The company confirmed that it will continue “and if possible accelerate, work on our strategic Residue Upgrade project and the implementation of other capital projects that can be done only when the units are partially out of operation.”

** Finland’s Neste said it was planning to restructure its refinery operations in Finland and is looking at shutting down operations at Naantali to focus instead “on the terminal and harbor operations”. Separately, it plans to transform Porvoo’s operations into co-processing renewable and circular raw materials. In 2017, Neste completed the integration of the Porvoo and Naantali refineries which now operate as one refinery with a total capacity of 13 million mt/year.

** Total said it will convert its French Grandpuits refinery “into a zero-crude platform”. It plans an investment of more than Eur500 million ($590 million) in the site. By 2024, the platform will focus on new industrial activities, including production of renewable diesel mostly for the aviation industry, production of bioplastics, plastics recycling and operation of two photovoltaic solar power plants. Crude oil refining will be discontinued in the first quarter of 2021 and storage of oil products will end in late 2023. Meanwhile, deliveries of oil products were disrupted from Granduits following a call for a strike, Total confirmed Oct. 13. Staff has voted Oct. 12 to go on strike from Oct. 13 at Grandpuits over the company’s plans to convert the refinery into a bio plant, stop refining activity in 2021 and expected job losses, according to local media reports. A source with the labor CGT union confirmed the strike adding that it is over job losses among staff and subcontractors while the company had previously promised that the conversion would not involve redundancies.

** Gunvor Group said June 23 it has commenced the process of assessing whether to mothball its Antwerp site, “given the uncertainties that the refinery will be again an economically viable operation in the near future.”

** Total has agreed to sell its Lindsey refinery in the UK to fuel trader and marketer 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.

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

** Spanish refiner Repsol took its fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) at Corunna offline in April and has reported no change in the situation as of Oct. 2. At Bilbao, Crude 2 unit, which was taken offline May 9 due to market reasons, is still offline, the company said Oct. 2. The unit is expected to stay offline until market conditions warrant. The halt has affected 40% of the refinery’s crude distillation and also includes the visbreaking unit. The FCC was taken offline in April, and the company has not confirmed its restart.

Meanwhile, oil product withdrawals by the Spanish retail market in September were down 24% year on year at 2.6 million cu m (2.1 million mt), compared with a 22% decline in August, with jet fuel demand showing the largest decline, data from Spanish national fuel distributor Compania Logistica de Hidrocarburos (CLH) published Oct. 5 showed. Kerosene demand in Spain was down 74% in September year on year to 182,300 cu m (about 145,000 mt) — a three-month low volume, CLH said. The decline was sharper than in August, which saw a 67% drop to 250,000 cu m. Meanwhile, diesel and gasoline demand narrowed their previous declines with both showing a year-on-year fall of 7% in September, with withdrawals of 2.05 million cm m (1.7 million mt) and 427,000 cu m (320,000 mt) respectively. The declines for September were both the narrowest since the State of Alarm was declared in the country in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic, with demand bottoming out at a 78% decline for gasoline and a 43% fall for diesel, both in April.

Italian refinery production in the first seven months of the year fell 12.2% to 35.42 million mt compared to the same period in 2020, dragged down by crude refining, according to data released by Italian industry group Unione Petrolifera. Standard crude throughput plunged 15.6% to 31.92 million mt in the first seven months of the year combined, UP said. The average run rate in the first seven months was 69.6% of the 87.25 million mt/year full capacity, unchanged from the first half of the year, UP said.

Turkey’s diesel demand during September rose 5.93% year on year to 1.662 billion liters, according to energy ministry data. The rise was lower than the 6.13% rise reported in August, the 7.5% in July and 8.2% in June but still stands in stark contrast to the fall of 27.7% in May when much of Turkey was still partially locked down, schools and universities were closed and many office workers were working from home. Gasoline demand over the same period rose by 18.9% to 274,603 million liters, a sharp rise from the 8.1% year on year increase recorded in August, but down on the 24.5% reported in July, and in sharp contrast to declines of 2.1% in June and 32.4% in May. Diesel demand is expected to increase further in October as a staged re-opening of Turkish schools is implemented and demand for private school minibus services increases.

Turkey’s main refiner Tupras which operates four refineries with a combined capacity of 562,000 b/d, announced on Oct. 9 that it was revising down its anticipated production for 2020 from 24 million mt to 22 million mt, sales expectations from 25 million mt to 23 million mt and capacity utilization for 2020 to fall from 80-85% to 75-80%. The company said it expected the Mediterranean Complex Margin to fall from between $1.0-$2.0/barrel to around 50 cents/barrel and for its own Tupras Net Refinery Margin to fall from between $3.0-$4.0/barrel to around $1.0/barrel.

In other news, Petronor said that at Bilbao refinery it has started testing prior to the start-up of a new pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit, which is part of the HD3 hydrodesulfurization unit. The PSA is used to purify hydrogen before it is used in the refinery’s H2 circuits.

Near-term maintenance

New and revised entries

** Shell’s Pernis refinery in the Netherlands will start works on one unit from mid-October, it said Oct. 13. The works are expected to continue for around two to three months, traders said.

** Spain’s Petronor said it will take the alkylation unit AK3 in plant 3 at Bilbao offline from Oct. 19 for maintenance work. The restart of the unit is seen taking place Dec. 13, Petronor said.

** Spain’s La Rabida will keep two units at the refinery — fuel 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.

** Repsol said it was planning to extend a planned turnaround of its 1.83 million mt/yr hydrocracker at Puertollano in November to carry out works on a number of other units, as had been reported by local newspaper Mi Ciudad Real. The halt will last about one month, Repsol also confirmed. The newspaper report said several units associated with the hydrocracker will be affected. These include the 1.6 million mt/yr fluid catalytic cracker, which has been working at minimum levels due to pandemic restrictions on travel, the 3.9 million mt/yr vacuum unit and the 1.4 million mt/yr coker. The halt would also allow some maintenance work in crude unit 2 or the alkylation unit, which together could mean halting 80% of the refinery. The lubricants unit and petrochemical sites would retain normal activity, the report said.

** 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. The company is not considering the closure of the refinery, and is continuing with the heavy residue upgrade, which includes building a delayed coker. The company confirmed that it will continue “and if possible accelerate, work on our strategic Residue Upgrade project and the implementation of other capital projects that can be done only when the units are partially out of operation.”

** Sonatrach’s Augusta refinery located in the Southern Italian island of Sicily has placed its FCC unit back online after it suffered a temporary technical issue Oct. 4, according to sources close to the refinery. The technical issue was solved shortly thereafter, though the FCC was kept offline for a few days to run tests on it, according to the sources. No information was provided about the nature of the technical issue.

** Russian energy group Lukoil’s ISAB refinery in Sicily will focus its two-month maintenance cycle starting on Oct. 15 on the cracking and the desulfurization plants in the South section of the refinery as well as other units, a source close to the refinery told S&P Global Platts Oct. 13. The maintenance will also include in-depth work on the refinery’s integrated gasification combined cycle cogeneration unit, which generates electric energy and has capacity of 549 MW. A new compressor plant will be added to the refinery to reduce its environmental impact, the source said. 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. The separate IGCC plant is connected to both plants. The maintenance will also involve some work on the North plant, though this will be limited compared with the South plant upgrades. The refinery will be offline for the entire period, the source said.

** The Wesseling site of the Rheinland refinery has completed its maintenance in early October and is gradually restarting operations. The major shutdown started on Aug.20 and was due to last until October. The refinery consists of the Wesseling (south) and Godorf (north) sites.

Existing entries

** 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.

** Germany’s Schwedt is carrying out partial works, which have resulted in lower runs, according to sources. The refinery is running at around 80%.

** Italy’s Milazzo refinery has postponed a wide-scale maintenance and upgrade cycle originally scheduled for October this year and would have included works on its turboexpander plant to next year, according to sources close to the refinery. The maintenance will now 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.” The company was not available to comment.

** Total’s refinery in Antwerp has started maintenance late September, according to local media report. The installations are planned to restart from November 10. The turnaround involves increasing the efficiency of the furnace of one of the two CDUs. Works are planned for one of the two catalytic crackers.

** ExxonMobil’s Antwerp refinery is planning works in October, according to market sources. The full maintenance is planned for the whole month.

** Germany’s Lingen is due to carry out works in October, according to trading sources.

** API’s refinery in the Italian coastal town of Falconara Marittima is placing its U2500 desulfurization unit offline for maintenance and upgrade works. The refinery went fully offline at the start of April after starting to wind down operations in March in a bid to offset a decline in demand for refined products in Italy caused by the coronavirus pandemic. It has since been restarted, and the plant carried out maintenance and upgrade works on its TK205 crude storage units in June. The Falconara refinery facility had only returned to full operations in March after a 40-day turnaround that began on Jan. 25.

** Greek refiner Hellenic said that the planned maintenance at its Aspropyrgos refinery, the first after a five-year run, will start on Aug. 28, with the gradual shutdown of units, and will last nine weeks, “two more than planned, to include additional safety measures for COVID-19.” Due to the maintenance, Hellenic expects 800,000 mt lower output spread over Q3 and Q4.

** Turkey’s Tupras said work on the U-400 FCC, U-9200 CCR, U-9900 Isomerization and U-9900 MQD units at Izmir and the Plt-6 Desulfurizer at Izmit, all of which had been scheduled to take between three to eight weeks each during the fourth quarter, have been postponed to 2021.

** Finland’s Neste said July 23 there is “scheduled catalyst change” in one of our Porvoo units in the third quarter and at the Rotterdam refinery in the fourth quarter.

** 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.

** Gunvor said June 23 its Rotterdam refinery was undergoing a turnaround due to be completed in October. The company said at the end of March it was delaying the turnaround due to the coronavirus pandemic. Gunvor halted CDU1 in November for economic reasons and also to prepare for the upcoming turnaround in March, it said previously. The refinery has CDU units of 38,000 b/d and 50,000 b/d capacity.

** France’s Gonfreville is working at around 50% capacity after its CDU was damaged. Works to repair the crude distillation unit at the Gonfreville refinery which have been suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak have now resumed, according to market sources. Total said earlier the CDU, which was damaged in December following a fire at a pump feeding crude oil, will restart before the end of the year.

** Planned general maintenance and an upgrade at Germany’s Leuna refinery this autumn has 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. The maintenance had been planned to take placed over six weeks, regional newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported. Total said in 2019 it would invest Eur150 million to reduce production of heavy products as demand decreases, and increase production of methanol, a key feedstock for the chemical industry. Work was due to continue until 2021, with the bulk carried out during a major shutdown of the refinery in 2020.

** 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. No information was provided on which plants were involved in the maintenance and upgrade works, nor when the EST plant would be restarted. The works being carried out are not the series of works planned for the EST unit that had previously been suspended, the source said.

** 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

** 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.

** Italy’s Milazzo will carry out wide-scale maintenance and upgrade works on its diesel plants in the second quarter of 2021. Around half of the refinery’s plants will be involved in the maintenance works. The works were originally planned for the autumn of this year but were recently postponed to next year after the COVID-19 crisis and the subsequent drop in demand for refined products led Milazzo to cancel all but necessary maintenance and investment works this year.

** 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.

** Italy’s Livorno will avoid all non-essential maintenance and investment as part of a plan to reduce coronavirus-related risks. As part of the decision, the refinery will postpone a planned extraordinary maintenance cycle scheduled for October to 2021, though it is not clear whether this will take place in the first few months of the year or in April-May. The October maintenance was originally scheduled to last about one and a half months and would have involved most of the refinery’s main units as well as its storage plants.

** 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 in its Q1 report that its Porvoo refinery’s major turnaround in 2020 is now 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.

** The next large-scale maintenance at France’s Grandpuits will be in 2021. The works will include cleaning and repair of units, as well as works to improve performance. Works are planned to take place in Q1, 2021, Total said.

** 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.

Upgrades

New and revised entries

** Bulgaria’s Burgas refinery has awarded a contract to US Lummus Technology for a 280,000 mt/yr polypropylene plant. The contract includes a technology license as well as as basic design engineering, training and services, and catalyst supply, Lummus said. “This award is the second significant polypropylene contract we’ve signed with Lukoil recently,” said Leon de Bruyn, Lummus Technology’s President and Chief Executive Officer in the statement. Lummus said it has earlier been awarded a contract for a propylene unit at Lukoil’s Russian Kstovo refinery in Nizhny Novgorod.

** Croatia’s INA has selected Axens Futurol ethanol technology for the “basic engineering design” of an advanced bioethanol production plant at Sisak. Hungary MOL’s Croatian affiliate INA made a final investment decision to carry out a residue upgrade project at the Rijeka refinery. The project includes building a delayed coker. The company confirmed in Oct. 2020 that it will continue “and if possible accelerate, work on our strategic Residue Upgrade project and the implementation of other capital projects that can be done only when the units are partially out of operation.” Its Rijeka refinery will be offline for a few months from November. MOL said the Sisak refinery will be converted into a bitumen production site and logistics hub. The facility may also produce lubricants and bio-fuel components too, subject to further investment decisions.

Existing entries

**An upgrade of Preem’s Lysekil refinery near Brofjorden has been abandoned, the company said in a statement Sept. 28. The residue oil conversion complex project “was an innovative but technically difficult and costly project designed to reduce the production of sulfur-rich heavy fuel oil in favor of low sulfur products such as diesel and gasoline,” it said. “As a result of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the energy sector globally, the economic logic of investment in this project no longer stands.” The main objective of the project was to “reduce the production of sulfur-rich heavy oil in favor of products with a low sulfur content, such as diesel and gasoline,” the company said Sept. 28. The upgrade plan included a phase-out of fossil fuel and production of 5 million cu m of renewable gasoline, diesel and jet fuel by 2030, the company said previously. The refinery was not planning to increase the processing of crude oil but to reduce fuel oil output. Around 20% of the refinery’s current output is high sulfur fuel oil, demand for which has diminished following the IMO 2020 sulfur cap on marine fuel. Preem was aiming to build a slurry hydrocracking plant that could convert fuel oil into sulfur-free gasoline and diesel. It would also have been used to make renewable fuels but required an environmental clearance. The company will instead concentrate funds on projects “which enable increased renewable production. These are also the projects that will most effectively secure jobs and regional development,” it said Sept. 28.

** Poland’s PKN Orlen said Sept. 24 it has completed the Czech Crown 9.6 billion ($410 million) polyethylene 3 unit investment at its Litvinov refinery in the Czech Republic. The refinery’s owners, Unipetrol, a 100%-owned PKN subsidiary, has now taken charge of the black polyethylene unit, the second part of the investment, PKN said in a statement. The first part, the natural polyethylene unit, was completed in April. The polyethylene 3 unit, which can produce 270,000 mt/year of high density polyethylene, will replace production of one of the two existing production units with a capacity of 120,000 mt/year. Litvinov’s polyethylene capacity will increase from 320,000 mt/year to 470,000 mt/year as a result of the investment, PKN said. Separately, McDermott International has been awarded a contract for engineering, procurement and construction management services for the upgrade of the hydrocracker at Czech Litvinov refinery.

** PKN Orlen is holding talks with the Lithuanian government about it co-financing a bottom-of-the-barrel processing investment at the country’s Orlen Lietuva refinery. “Without in-depth processing there will be no future for this refinery. With the bad macroeconomic environment and margins as low as they are now, if the refinery is not modern it has problems with efficiency,” PKN CEO Daniel Obajtek told state news agency PAP Biznes. Obajtek said the investment would be PKN’s largest in Lithuania and it would increase the refinery’s diesel, gasoline and jet fuel yield by around 10 percentage points. Obajtek said that once a final investment decision was taken the project could be completed within three years.

** The industrial complex in Tarragona will adapt one of its units to manufacture advanced high resistance polypropylene with start-up in 2021, Repsol said. When operational, the plant will be the first of its kind in the Iberian peninsula to produce the highly specialized polymers for use in the automotive sector, Repsol said. At Spain’s Cartagena, work restarted in September on a lubricants unit at the at the Ilboc plant alongside Korean partner SKSol, after being halted in March amid COVID-19 restrictions. The lubricants plant will see capacity increase 50% to 1.0 million mt/yr when work is concluded, with no date supplied.

** UK Humber refinery plans a capacity increase for its renewable diesel output in mid-2021, the company said. Humber can produce 1,000 b/d of renewable diesel, after starting production around a year ago, and will reach 4,000 b/d next year. It is processing used cooking oil in the cracker, it said during a Q2 conference call.

** The Kazakh-Romanian Energy Investment Fund (FIEKR) has signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract for Turkey’s Calik Enerji to build a cogeneration plant at Romania’s Petromidia refinery, Rompetrol said in a statement. Commissioning of the $148 million project is targeted for the first half of 2023. The new combined electricity and heat production plant will use natural gas as the main fuel. It will have capacity of 80 MW, of which 60-70 MW will fully cover the Petromidia plant’s electricity needs with up to 20 MW used to heat water for the town of Navodari’s heating system. Romania’s Petromidia is also planning to build a diesel dewaxing unit “which will allow the refinery to significantly improve the process of obtaining diesel fuels in the wintertime,” the company said in a statement. The project has estimated completion in September 2022. Separately, a second project is aimed at the increase by more than 30% of the production of polymers in the petrochemical division of Petromidia, which is “the sole producer in Romania in this field”.

** Greece’s Motor Oil Hellas said that its capital expenditure in H1 included the naphtha treatment complex, which has entered the construction phase in 2020 and is expected to be completed in Q1 2022.

** Poland’s second largest refiner Grupa Lotos Gdansk refinery in H1 continued its Hydrogen recovery unit project, which is 99% complete, and will help increase the production of hydrogen, LPG and naphtha. However its commissioning date, previously planned for H12020 has been postponed to the second half of the year “due to difficulties related to the pandemic and technical issues”. Furthermore, there is a risk of delayed launch of projects in pre-FID phase, such as the HBO (oil hydrocracker). Grupa Lotos is looking at developing a hydrocracker unit for the production of base oils.

** Valero said the cogen project at Pembroke, UK will be completed in 2021. It has previously said that the project had slowed down, “pushing out” the mechanical completion by six to nine months. In 2016, Valero submitted a planning application to build a 45 MW combined heat and power generation plant at Pembroke, which will provide power to the refinery and supplement its steam demand.

** PKN Orlen laid the foundation stone July 6 to mark the start of a Zloty 1 billion ($250 million) investment to build a visbreaking unit at its Plock refinery. The unit, which will increase gasoline and diesel yield at the refinery, is being built by a consortium of KTI Poland and IDS-BEU under a turnkey contract. It will be completed by the end of 2022. The company has said previously the visbreaker will allow the refinery to reduce fuel oil output and increase its production of distillates. The unit will have a capacity to produce 200,000 mt/year of diesel. Ongoing modernization of the hydrocracking and diesel hydrodesulfurisation units at Plock will also increase the refinery’s diesel production capacity. PKN Orlen, said it has purchased a license and basic design for the modernization of a hydrodesulfurisation (HOG) unit to increase the production of high-margin products at its Plock refinery. PKN signed a contract to buy the license from Axens. The HOG unit at Plock was launched in 1999. The modernization will allow the unit to produce more diesel and gasoline.

** Spanish integrated energy company Repsol said June 15 it will build a 10-MW, green-hydrogen plant which it will use to produce synthetic fuels in collaboration with Saudi Aramco at its Bilbao refinery. The plant is part of an Eur80-million decarbonization project that will also include a carbon-capture project and a fuel-from-waste plant, and should be completed by 2024.

** Five 2 MW PEM electrolyzers have been installed and testing has begun at Shell’s Rheinland refinery in Germany, but delays to the Refhyne project are now anticipated due to coronavirus restrictions, UK hydrogen company ITM said in a trading update June 8. Germany’s Rhineland has started the construction of a new hydrogen production plant, using electrolysis, at its Wesseling site. The investment project, due for completion in 2020, will generate hydrogen from electricity rather than natural gas. The refinery consists of the Wesseling (south) and Godorf (north) sites. Separately, the refinery has received permission to start construction of a new power plant at Godorf. The new plant is scheduled to go on stream in 2021. As part of the modernization, Shell is converting the power plant from oil to gas.

** Planned maintenance and an upgrade at Germany’s Leuna refinery this autumn has 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. Work was also due to continue in 2021 and by the end of next year the project would be completed. Total said in 2019 that it would invest Eur150 million over 2020-2021 to reduce production of heavy products as demand decreases, and increase production of methanol, an important feedstock for the chemical industry.

** Germany’s Heide refinery is looking to cut its carbon dioxide production for its industrial operations using grey hydrogen for refined products desulfurization, and from early 2019 green hydrogen has been added to the mix for feedstock purposes. “The goal is to have a 700 MW of electrolysis capacity installed by 2030, this would be enough to abate 1 million mt of CO2 per year by producing 100,000 mt of hydrogen…and this is only at our facility,” said Wollschlaeger. To achieve its ambitions, Heide is part of the “Westkuste 100” consortium that includes EDF, Orsted, Stadtwerke Heide, Thuga and Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, which have teamed up to advance the use of green hydrogen for industrial purposes. The consortium submitted a proposal in early 2019 to the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy to seek funds for the project. The outcome is expected to be known by the middle to end of 2020.

** A new diesel hydrodesulfurization unit at France’s Donges was expected to come online in 2023, Total said. Construction of the HDT-VGO units, which had been awarded to Kinetics Technology, will go ahead alongside a rail bypass which was the main requirement for the refinery’s upgrade to proceed. Kinetics Technology said it had been awarded the contract for building the 40,000 b/d hydrotreater. The French government, local authorities, railway operator SNCF and Total signed a memorandum of intent in 2016 to build the railroad track bypassing the Donges refinery. Total said previously that, following the bypass agreement, it would proceed with the planned upgrade. The bypass will be ready in 2022.

** Turkish refiner Tupras’ upgrade plans for its four refineries include a number of new units as well as works for modernizing existing ones. The company has opened an EPC tender valued at around $400 million for the construction of new sulfur units at its three main refineries, Izmit, Izmir and Kirikkale. Tupras has also signed a $66 million tender for the revamp of the FCC unit at Izmit, which will include the installation of flue gas treatment and energy back recovery systems. Installation work is set to start this year and complete in 2021. Work had already started on a $3.9 million modernization of the PLT-7 LPG Merox unit at Izmir designed to reduce sulfur content from 50 ppm to 30 ppm, to meet new emissions standards. Further upgrades planned at Izmir include a $25 million project to increase the capacity of the CCR U-9200 Platformer Unit from 160 cu m/hour to 225 cu m/hour, as well as a $69 million project to revamp the FCC unit and install flue gas treatment and energy recovery systems.

** Germany’s Burghausen refinery is planning to commission a new ISO C4 system for the production of high purity isobutane in September.

** Serbia’s Pancevo will upgrade the catalytic cracker, Gazprom Neft said. NIS, a subsidiary of Gazprom Neft, has signed a contract for developing the project with Lummus Technology, part of McDermott Group. The completion is earmarked for 2024. It is part of the refinery’s modernization, ongoing since 2009. Within the same project a unit will be built for the production of high octane gasoline components. The deep processing complex, part of the second modernization phase, also under Lummus project, is in the final stages of construction. The launch of the complex, which includes a delayed coker and will increase the depth of processing to 99.2% and increase gasoline and diesel output, will help the refinery halt fuel oil output.

** Gunvor is studying the potential installation of an HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) unit at the Rotterdam refinery.

** Bosnia’s Brod refinery is offline while it is being reconstructed. A pipeline, being built to supply it with natural gas to fuel its internal processes, is expected to be ready from Q3 2020. The refinery suspended its operations in 2019 for an upgrade and to prepare for the use of natural gas. The gas will replace fuel oil as a power source for the refinery processes.

** Varo Energy’s Cressier refinery in Switzerland is installing a new column at the crude distillation unit which will allow it to reduce CO2 emissions but also to expand the scope of its light products yield. The column will start operations in the second quarter of 2020.

** Upgrade work to increase San Roque’s refining margin, and construct a new hydrocracker, has been halted by local government, Cepsa said. The San Roque Council ordered earthworks at the site to be halted, affecting Cepsa’s work on its “Bottom of the Barrel” project. The upgrades are targeted for completion by 2022. Separately, Cepsa will revamp Isomax, fluid catalytic cracker, alkylation units at San Roque and will construct a methylene unit (Sorbex II).

** ExxonMobil said it has “made a final investment decision to expand” the Fawley refinery in the UK to increase production of ULSD by 45%, or 38,000 b/d. The more than $1 billion investment includes a hydrotreater to remove sulfur from diesel, supported by a hydrogen plant. Start-up was expected in 2021.

** Russian Lukoil plans to invest in its ISAB refinery in southern Italy and has also dropped plans announced in 2017 to sell the plant having not received suitable offers. Lukoil will invest $60 million in upgrades, including two hydrodesulfurization units.

** Cepsa said it will carry out upgrades to its aromax and hydrocracker units at Huelva. It is also carrying out an aromatics optimization project at the refinery.

** Israel’s Haifa District Court has rejected an appeal by Haifa municipality along with six other neighboring communities and environmental groups against the proposed expansion of the Bazan refinery.

** Total’s Feyzin is considering mothballing a visbreaker unit around 2021 as demand for heavy fuel is gradually declining and the unit works on average no more than three days a month. As a result of the mothballing seven people would lose their jobs, but would be offered other jobs within the organization, the company said.

Launches

Existing entries

** Preliminary work on Estonia’s new refinery has started, with an agreement signed between Eesti Energia and Viry Keemia Group with Italian company KT Kinetics Technology. The preliminary project is due to be completed in the summer of 2020, “after which the main project will be decided,” according to Eesti Energia. The refinery will process 1.6 million mt/year shale oil and produce 1.5 million mt/year products. It is aimed to be completed in 2024 and produce naphtha, gasoil and ULSFO.

** Turkey’s Ersan Petrol plans to start construction of its 1.4 million mt/year Nazli refinery at Kahramanmaras in southeast Turkey in mid-2020, with the plant expected to begin operations in less than four years, company owner Ecvet Sayer said.

** Azerbaijani state oil company Socar is considering the development of a second refinery in Turkey, in addition to its existing 214,000 b/d Star refinery at Aliaga on Turkey’s central Aegean coast.
Source: Platts