Philippines government will not buy refinery

The President of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, has said that it is ‘not in the best interest’ of the government to buy Petron Corp.’s refinery, as offered by company chairman Ramon Ang.

Oil companies must be sensitive to consumer sentiment, Aquino told reporters when asked if Petron’s offer is an indication that oil companies are unhappy with their Philippine investments.

‘I don’t think at this point in time that it is in the best interest of the government to rerun [the refinery]’, Aquino said. ‘As a general rule, it is not efficient for the government to run something that is a purely business operation.’

Elsewhere in the region, operations are getting back on track in Taiwan and Singapore following facility downtimes.

Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp has restarted the largest of its three naphtha crackers, with capacity of 1.2 million tpy, following a planned maintenance, which started in mid August.

In Singapore, Royal Dutch Shell Plc has restarted a second crude distillation unit (capacity 110 000 bpd) at reduced rates following a fire at its refinery on September 28. The news comes a week after the first, a 210 000 bpd unit, was partially restarted. It is also expected to restart its distillate-making hydrocracker at the 500 000 bpd plant, Shell's largest, within the next two or three days.

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