Global refining and petrochemicals news: 12 January 2015

Croatia

It has been reported that INA, Croatia’s oil and gas company has not made a decision to shutdown the Sisak refinery. The refinery is partly owned by INA and the Hungarian company MOL.

Ghana

Following a four month shutdown, operations have now resumed at the Tema Oil Refinery Co. Ltd. plant in Tema, Ghana. Crude processing began at the end of December last year following financial support from Nigeria’s Access Bank PLC which allowed the company to source 800 000 bbls of crude oil feedstock.

Kuwait

Following a two week shutdown period for maintenance, a 122 000 bpd crude processing unit at the Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery has been restarted. The KNPC owned facility brought the unit back online on 2 January 2015 with 80% processing capacity and 100% processing capacity is expected to be restored to the unit by 21 January 2015. The plant has a total refining capacity of 442 000 bpd.

Malaysia

Shell Refining Company Bhd is reportedly considering selling its assets or converting its operations in Malaysia into a storage terminal. The company has said that it is looking in to this as refining margins are expected to remain depressed due to overcapacity in the global refining sector.

Nigeria

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Nigeria have highlighted an unaccounted for N152 billion that were supposedly spend on failed turn around and maintenance work at the country’s four refineries between 2010 and 2013.

Saudi Arabia

It has been reported that US$28 billion in petrochemical plants are due to come online in Saudi Arabia this year. This boost to the downstream sector will see the creation of thousands of jobs and move Saudi Arabia’s main source of income further from oil. Saudi Aramco is seeking to invest US$100 billion over the next 10 years in the downstream sector as part of a government strategy to boost petrochemicals production in the country.

UK

A&P Falmouth has reportedly submitted an application to build facilities at the Falmouth Docks, in Cornwall, England. The application includes the construction of an oil separation plant, the first of its kind in the UK. The facility is expected to include four cylinder tanks, a bunded area, pipelines, diesel tank and a servicing area. The facility will process oil slop from docked ships and separate it into oil and wastewater.

Sources: Dalje, Penn Energy, Daily Trust, Yahoo, The National, New Straits Times.

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd

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