Global refining news: 15 January 2015

Croatia

Operations at the Sisak refinery have been temporarily halted. The INA has called for the halt as the drastic fall in oil prices have severely weakened profitability in the oil and gas sector. Processing operations were halted on January 14.

India

Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has announced that it is going to increase capacity at the Bina refinery in Madhya Pradesh. BPCL is seeking to increase capacity to 15 million tpy with an investment of Rs23 000 crore. BPCL’s partner Oman Oil Corp Ltd are going to increase the capacity of the plant to 7.8 million tpy in the first phase of the project by 2018 at a cost of Rs3500 crore. Phase II will see the refinery hit its 15 million tpy capacity.

Switzerland

The Swiss branch of Tamoil has said that it is suspending operations at its refinery in the south west of Switzerland due to financial loss. The 55 000 bpd refinery in Collombey is suffering due to the high costs of importing refined petroleum products along with declining fuel demand and increasing regulatory costs.

USA

Following the explosion at the Husky Energy Inc. owned refinery in Ohio, it has been announced that the plant will be closed for approximately one week. It has also been announced that despite the closure, supplies to customers will not be affected. Husky has said that the plant could function whilst the work is being carried out to restore the damaged unit but it would rather err on the side of caution and safety.

Also following the above explosion, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has announced that no dangerous contaminants were released into the air following the explosion or the ensuing fire that was ablaze for over 14 hours. Testing was carried out by the US EPA as well as Allen County and Husky Energy themselves.

Delek Refining has announced that it is getting ready to shutdown the Tyler refinery for a 45 day upgrade project. The plant will increase from a 62 000 bpd facility to 74 000 bpd at a cost of US$67.4 million. The work will commence next week and run until March.

Following a fall at the Citgo Petroleum Corp’s Corpus Christi refinery in Texas, a worker has died from their injuries. The man fell from 120 ft on the gasoline producing fluid catalytic cracking unit number 2.

Following a release from the Marathon Petroleum refinery in Galvaston County, Texas, a fine while powder was found sticking to cars and lawns in the surrounding area. The material is thought to not be hazardous but can cause irritation of the skin, eyes and lungs. The substance is being reported as spent catalyst that was accidentally released by a fluid catalytic cracking unit at the refinery.

Sources: The Sun Herald, Insurance Journal, Tyler Morning Telegraph, Yahoo, Portfolio, The Economic Times, SWI, Houston Chronicle.

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