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As Shell plans to terminate the processing of crude oil at the Wesseling plant in the Rhineland refinery, there will be new closures in Europe, adding a list of permanent or temporary closures.

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** Shell plans to end crude oil processing at the Wesseling base in the Rhineland Refinery in 2025, as these facilities will be reused for non-fossil fuel feedstock and renewable hydrogen production. Shell outlined plans for the facility to use various new biological and waste materials, stressing that no final investment decision has yet been made and crude oil processing will still be carried out at the adjacent Godov plant. The Wesseling part of the Rhineland refinery accounts for half of the total refining capacity, which is 8 million tons per year. In October, the Refhyne II consortium developed a 100 MW electrolyzer at the Wesseling base to produce renewable hydrogen, and received a 32.4 million euro (37.4 million USD) grant from the European Union. The project is a continuation of the 10 MW Refhyne I of Europe's largest proton exchange membrane electrolyzer refinery, which began operations in July and can produce up to 1,300 metric tons/year of renewable hydrogen.

** After the closure of the crude oil distillation unit and fluid catalytic cracking unit at Petroineos' Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, its production capacity was reduced by 30% to approximately 150,000 barrels per day. In January, the company negotiated with employees about a proposal to reconfigure the Grangemouth refinery. The company had previously proposed a smaller refining business in Grangemouth and planned to seal CDU1 and FCC, two units that "closed throughout the COVID pandemic due to a significant reduction in local and international fuel demand."

** The Livorno refinery in northwestern Italy will stop refining and suspend all related activities before the end of 2022. In the foreseeable future, the production of lubricants and auxiliary activities will continue. In January of this year, Eni stated that it was evaluating the conversion of Livorno into a biorefinery.

** ExxonMobil permanently shut down its Slagen refinery in Norway in June and converted it into a fuel import terminal.

** Gunvor's Rotterdam refinery closed two crude oil processing units, one in 2019 and the other in 2020, and is developing new processes around the collaborative processing of hydrogen and vegetable oil. Gunvor also agreed to work with the petrochemical group Dow to use existing equipment at its Rotterdam refinery to purify pyrolysis oil feedstock from plastic waste.

** Gunvor's refinery in Antwerp is being sealed, while terminal activities at that location are continuing. The future development opportunities are being evaluated.

** TotalEnergies stated that it will transform the Grandpuits refinery into a biofuel and plastic recycling complex and will end crude oil refining at the site in early 2021.

** Galp of Portugal stated in April that the last batch of installations at its Porto refinery should be stopped at the end of this month, and then decommissioning will begin, followed by purification. The company has stated that it will stop the refining business of the Porto Refinery from 2021 and concentrate its core refining activities and future development in the larger Sines refinery. The Porto site will still be a logistics center, and the company is evaluating other uses.

** Finland's Neste stated that it has stopped refining operations at its smaller Naantali refinery at the end of March 2021. With the closure of Naantali, the company will focus on terminal and port operations.

In other news, Valero said that the throughput of the North Atlantic refinery is expected to be 435,000-455,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter. These are the Quebec City refinery at 235,000 barrels per day and the Pembroke plant at 270,000 barrels per day.

At the same time, European demand for petroleum products is mostly rising, and profit margins have improved.

According to data from the national fuel distributor Exolum, driven by the strong growth in kerosene and gasoline sales, the volume of vehicle fuel supplied from storage facilities to the Spanish retail market in October increased by 18% year-on-year to 3.2 million cubic meters (2.6 million tons). With the normalization of travel conditions, the amount of kerosene supplied in the month was 440,000 cubic meters (352,000 metric tons), a year-on-year increase of 165%.

According to industry organization Unione Energie per la Mobilita, Italy's demand for refined oil in September increased by 5.9% year-on-year, or 282,000 tons, reaching 5 million tons. Demand for petroleum products this month was 3.2%, or 169,000 metric tons, lower than September 2019 before COVID-19. According to data from Unem, Italy's demand for refined oil in the first nine months of this year increased by 9.2% to 40.6 million tons, which is 9.8% lower than the period from January to September 2019.

Eni Group stated on October 29 that the throughput of its Italian refinery in the third quarter increased by 23% year-on-year to 4.53 million tons. In other parts of the world, its throughput increased by 14% to 2.77 million metric tons. In the first nine months of this year, the throughput of the Italian refinery increased by 14% to 12.38 million tons. In the rest of the world, its throughput increased by 22% to 8.07 million tons. The company reported an average utilization rate of 83% in the third quarter, higher than 69% last year, and 76% in January-September, higher than 68%.

Austria-based OMV reported that its European refinery utilization rate was 86% in the first nine months of this year, down from 87% last year. The utilization rate of its refineries in Europe was 91% in the third quarter, higher than 90% in the same period last year. The company expects that the utilization rate of European refineries in 2021 will be higher than the 86% level in 2020. Previously, it expected the utilization rate to be the same as last year. "By 2021, our refineries in Europe have no plans for major transformations," it said.

OMV Petrom stated that the utilization rate of its Petrobrazi refinery from January to September 2021 was 95%, compared with 90% in the same period last year. Its utilization rate in the third quarter was 100%, compared with 86% in the third quarter of 2020, which is "significantly higher than the European average." The utilization rate in 2021 is expected to be above 95%, and in 2020 it will be 92%.

TotalEnergies of France reported that due to higher profit margins, refinery output increased in the third quarter. The throughput of its French refinery increased 3% this quarter to 274,000 barrels per day, but it still fell 46% compared to 2019. Overall, its throughput in the third quarter increased by 1% year-on-year to 1.225 million barrels per day, but dropped by 29% starting in 2019. From January to September, the output of all its refineries was 1.147 million barrels per day, a year-on-year decrease of 12%. Due to economic reasons, its Donges refinery is still in shutdown, while Grandpuits stopped refining in the first quarter and will be converted to a zero oil platform. The Lindsey refinery in the UK will be sold in the second quarter of 2021, and the Leuna refinery in Germany will undergo a large-scale overhaul in the second quarter.

PKN Orlen, Poland’s largest refiner, said on October 28 that due to increased domestic fuel demand and improved macroeconomic environment, the company’s throughput in the third quarter increased by 1% year-on-year to 8.319 million tons, and sales volume increased by 5% to 6.7 million tons. . The company stated in its third-quarter performance report that the utilization rate of its refinery increased by 1 percentage point to 94%. Due to the optimization of the throughput of heavy refined fractions, Plock's throughput dropped by 2% to 4.139 million tons, and the utilization rate dropped by 2 percentage points to 101%. The throughput of Orlen Lietuva in Lithuania increased by 6% to 2.185 million tons. Due to the improvement of the macro environment, the utilization rate increased by 4 percentage points to 85%. The output of the Unipetrol refinery in the Czech Republic increased by 1% to 1.935 million tons, and the utilization rate remained flat at 88%.

The company said on October 29 that the throughput of Polish refiner Grupa Lotos in the third quarter increased by 5.8% year-on-year to 2.699 million tons, as the demand for diesel and gasoline rose due to economic recovery. The utilization rate of the Gdansk refinery rose slightly to 102% year-on-year.

Turkish refiner Tupras stated that its total refinery output in the first nine months of 2021 was 18 million tons, an increase of 4.0% year-on-year, and the output in the third quarter increased by 9.0% from the second quarter to 6.9 million tons, an increase of 7.8% year-on-year. Tupras attributed the continued quarterly and annual growth in production to continuous improvement in distillate demand and normalization of inventories. Tupras said that due to the recovery in demand, its capacity utilization rate in the third quarter has risen from 91% in the second quarter to 96%, while the 9-month capacity utilization rate has risen from 80.9% in the same period in 2020 to 84.1%.

However, Finland’s Neste reported on October 27 that its sales and production of petroleum products fell sharply in the first nine months of this year, which was affected by the major transformation of the Porvoo refinery in the second quarter. The refinery started its turnaround in early April and is scheduled to last approximately 12 weeks. On June 24, it said it had completed its turnaround and restarted production. When Neste announced its third-quarter results on October 27, it said that the refinery's output this quarter was 2.828 million tons, which was lower than the 3.302 million tons in the same period last year. The output from January to September was 6.544 million tons, which was lower than the 9.861 million tons in the same period last year.

In other news, Phillips 66 stated that in terms of energy costs, its refinery in the Humber, UK, is “the most efficient refinery in our fleet” and does not need to purchase “large amounts of natural gas to run the refinery”. The company stated on the conference call that high natural gas prices are "a headwind, but not a big headwind in any case", the company said on the conference call, adding that the Humber refinery has a "quite large" catalytic cracking unit. Installations and three “gas-fired generator sets.” “Many refineries have the ability to provide fuel for propane and a small amount of butane,” the company said on a conference call, adding that another way to produce more natural gas is to “improve severity". The recent high natural gas prices have led to high hydrogen costs and put pressure on the economies of European refineries, forcing some plants, such as hydrocrackers, to stop production.

According to market sources, the hydrocracking unit at TotalEnergies' Antwerp refinery has been offline. The shutdown was attributed to high hydrogen costs.

Refinery capacity national owner unit time Sannazzaro 190000 Italy Eni company EST 2020 Tenerife 90000 Spain CEPSA offline from 2014 Bratislava 122000 Slovak MOL part 2020 Danube 165000 Hungary MOL part 2020 Ploiesti 48000 Romania Luke Part September Burgas 190000 Bulgaria Lukoil Company Full 2021 Gothenburg 125000 Sweden Preem 2021 Cartagena 220,000 Spain Repsol Part Oct Sines 220,000 Portugal Galp Part Oct Feyzin 109,000 France TotalEnergies Part Back Rijeka 90,000 Croatia INA All 11 Month Izmir 220,000 Tupras, Turkey Part 2022

Petrobrazi 90,000 Romanian OMV at 2022 Gdansk 210,000 points Poland Lotos at 2022 Holborn 105,000 Germany Oilinvest at 2023 Sarpom 180000 Italy United at 2021 Petromidia 114,000 Romania Rompetrol at 2024 Livinov 108,000 Czech Unipetrol at 2024 Ingolstadt 110,000 Germany Gunvor Part 2022 Haifa 197,000 Israel Bazan Part 2022 Burghausen 76000 Germany OMV Complete Q3, 2022

**The Rijeka refinery in Croatia plans to temporarily shut down production on October 28 to replace the catalyst, and will use this time to carry out other plant work, and at the same time, will ensure that the products are delivered to the market during the shutdown period.

** Bilbao, Spain, stopped its G4 diesel desulfurization unit at the plant on October 27. The diesel desulfurization unit on October 27 was not specified for how long it will be offline. The refinery restarted the H4 hydrogen unit at Plant 1, which was stopped for a day on October 26, it said.

** Starting from the last week of October, Galp will perform 20 days of maintenance on Sines' hydrocracking unit. The crude oil distillation unit of the refinery ceased operation around October 11 due to an accidental shutdown of one of the furnaces. Since the furnace has been out of maintenance, the operation speed of the unit has been lower than normal. The company expects that work will end this quarter and the refinery will be fully operational before the end of the year. The total throughput in the fourth quarter may be 30% lower than the 15 million tons in the third quarter.

** Feyzin in France restarted its CDU after a power outage in early October. The device ceased operation after the fire, and only the FCC device remained online. The company declined to comment. It had said at the time of the fire that the refinery had to adjust the operations of certain units. The company stated that the fire broke out in the early morning of October 4 and was quickly extinguished without causing casualties, and added that it is ensuring supplies to its service stations and customers.

** The company stated in its third-quarter earnings report on November 5 that MOL’s Danube refinery continued to undergo maintenance in the first quarter of the fourth quarter, following a smaller scale in the second and third quarters. This year's maintenance plan, after the planned work was postponed to 2020, in order to control costs.

** Tupras, a Turkish refiner, said that the scheduled maintenance of the vacuum unit and lubricating oil complex at its Izmir refinery was originally scheduled for six weeks in the fourth quarter and has now been postponed to 2022. According to reports, the Izmit refinery was completed in 2021, but the FCC unit of its 227,000 barrels/day Izmit refinery began to be retrofitted in the first quarter. Tupras stated in the first half of the report that the work plan will take 30 weeks, but did not give an expected completion date. According to its nine-month report, this work is in progress, and it is now expected to take 41 weeks, but again it did not mention a completion date. The scheduled maintenance of the Izmit crude oil plant will take two weeks to complete in the fourth quarter. The Kirikkale refinery in Tupras has no planned maintenance in 2021.

** According to market sources, Lukoil’s Neftochim refineries in Burgas and Ploiesti, Bulgaria are expected to be completed by the end of November. Burgas postponed major works originally scheduled for 2021. The refinery usually carries out works in February and March, but it has been postponed until later in 2021.

** The Gothenburg refinery in Sweden is currently undergoing maintenance and is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021.

** Spain’s Repsol stated on September 30 that it will invest 75 million euros (87 million US dollars) for planned shutdowns, including a full turnaround of Cartagena’s conversion and hydrotreating plants, including Europe’s largest Of the coking unit. This project is the largest and most costly project in the history of the refinery. It is scheduled to start on the weekend of October 2 and last for 50 days. In addition to the simultaneous work of all conversion devices, Repsol will also carry out energy efficiency projects, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 68,000 metric tons/year. The company said it included a new compressor in a flare stack, a new preheating unit in the top unit furnace and a new tower at the same location.

** The Sannazzaro de Burgondi refinery in Italy has been partially shut down for extensive maintenance work. The slurry technology (EST) device was rolled off the line after a fire in 2016, and the hydrocracking unit and visbreaking unit of the refinery are currently being maintained and upgraded. It is expected that all devices will remain offline for approximately 18 months. Eni's EST factory was originally scheduled to restart in 2020.

** The only oil refinery in the Canary Islands in Tenerife will be permanently closed for a long time. There has been no production since 2014. Cepsa will install some logistics and storage facilities on site to carry out more extensive recycling projects.

** OMV plans to perform a turnaround at its Burghausen refinery in Germany in the third quarter of 2022. The entire refinery will be shut down, including the butadiene plant.

** Bazan of Israel has postponed the regular maintenance of the Haifa FCC from the second quarter of 2021 to the first half of 2022, when all Carmel Olefin facilities will also be maintained.

** Gunvor Group stated that its Ingolstadt refinery in Germany will carry out a project focusing on heating systems and exchangers, “to continue to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions.” By implementing the project on the FCC, the planned transformation in 2023 will be Allow additional cuts.

** Grupa Lotos, the second largest refiner in Poland, will perform the second part of maintenance at its Gdansk refinery in the spring of 2022.

** Czech Unipetrol stated that after its Litvinov plant turned around in the second quarter of 20, the refinery was ready for production for the new four-year cycle. Therefore, the next turnaround will expire in 2024.

** The two-month maintenance work originally scheduled for October 2019 at the Sarpom refinery in Trecate, Italy has been postponed to 2021. Detailed information on which refineries' installations will be upgraded as part of maintenance-every 3 times it needs to be upgraded-4 years-has not yet appeared.

** The Holborn refinery near Hamburg in northern Germany is scheduled for the next overhaul in 2023. Its previous maintenance was in the fall of 2018. The refinery carries out major projects every five years.

** Romania's Petrobrazi will undergo the next major transformation in 2022.

** With maintenance in 2020, Romania’s Petromidia and petrochemical divisions “will align with the new operating strategy, with an overall turnaround time of four years and a technology shutdown time of two years,” the company said.

** Total's Feyzin is considering sealing up the visbreaking unit around 2021 because the demand for heavy fuels is declining, and the unit works no more than three days a month on average.

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