Downstream news update: Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Australia

Caltex has announced that over 100 jobs will be lost at the Lytton refinery by the end of next year as the refinery seeks to become more competitive. It has been said that 40 full time employees will be let go along with 30% of the contractors that work at the plant. At the moment the refinery employs 350 full time workers and 200 contractors.

India

It has been announced that Rs1 lakh crore is going to be invested in India’s very first land locked oil and chemicals investment hub. It will be created around the Bina refinery in Madhya Pradesh, which will be expanded. Production at the Bina refinery will be increased from 8 million t to 15 million t as part of this project.

Iran

Bandar Abbas Oil Refining Company has invested 35 billion rails over the last year in improving safety at refining facilities. Personnel across the company have received in total 29 016 hours of safety training alone. The company has said that it sees investment in saving as profitable rather than as a cost.

Kenya

It has been announced that Kenya is still undecided on the fact of its only oil refinery. The country can either convert the plant into an oil storage facility or invest in an upgrade. The decision needs to be made following the acquisition of 50% of the plant from Essar Energy. Complaints about the quality of the projects from the refinery are what is prompting the decision to upgrade or change the facility completely. US$ 5 million was spent to acquire the 50% share of the plant from Essar.

Korea

For the first time in almost 40 years, Alaskan crude oil has been imported in to Korea for processing in refineries. An oil tanker with a cargo of 800 000 t of crude produced at the Slope oilfield in Northern Alaska has been sent to Yeosu port, South Jeolla Province.

Malaysia

Petron Corp has started up a US$ 2 billion refinery in Bataan province in anticipation of full commercial startup in 2015. The project which is part of the Bataan refinery master plan 2 is the biggest and most ambitious executed by the Malaysian company. Once fully up and running the facility will be able to produce high margin products such as gasoline and diesel.

New Zealand

The Employment Relations Authority has been asked to overthrow a threatened strike at the Marsden Point refinery by operators Refining NZ. This has been asked for in the interests of the public and country’s economy. A two day strike had been scheduled for this week and would have see 162 refinery workers off site leading to the shutdown of the facility and an 11 day halt on production.

Singapore

ExxonMobil Corp. has announced the start of planned maintenance at its Singapore refinery. The work started on October 6 and will run on for several weeks. The Jurong mainland refinery has a total processing capacity of 302 000 bpd and during the maintenance period, individual units will be taken offline and then restarted at various points.

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/13102014/asia-africa-mid-east-refining-petchem-news/