Bitumen output restarts at Miro's Karlsruhe refinery

Bitumen production at Miro's 310,000 b/d Karlsruhe refinery in southwest Germany restarted yesterday and truck loadings resumed today, around one week after it was halted.

Market participants with regular bitumen offtake from the refinery said the halt to bitumen production was because a crude oil delivery was "contaminated" because its water content was too high.

Feeding crude with excessive water content into a refinery crude distillation unit can damage trays in the tower. Crude with high water content needs to allow water to settle to the bottom of storage tanks before it can be processed. It takes longer for water to settle in heavier crudes that generally have higher bitumen content than lighter crude grades. Bitumen players said the contaminated crude was heavy, causing an extended stoppage to bitumen output and supply from the Miro refinery.

Market participants said only penetration grades 50/70 and some 70/100 — used mainly for asphalting road surfaces — are being loaded today while softer pen 160/220 that's mainly used for general construction work like roofing would start becoming available over the 6-7 April weekend.

Bitumen supplies will again be disrupted next week because of planned 8-15 April maintenance work affecting the gantry used for loading bitumen trucks, halting most bitumen truck loadings, with no pen 50/70 set to be available to the market over that period, with produced volumes going into storage. Some volumes of pen 160/220 will however continue to be lifted from the refinery during the period of the work.

By Tom Woodlock