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Prax Lindsey bitumen production to cease by mid-2023

  • Märkte: Oil products
  • 16.12.22

Prax Group's 105,700 b/d Lindsey refinery in northeast England will stop bitumen production early next year after facing mounting feedstock supply challenges.

Those challenges are understood by market participants to have in large part been linked to the increasing difficulty of sourcing Russian crude and refinery feedstocks, with the UK and EU sanctions regimes on Russian oil exports now being stepped up.

The closure will make the UK, which according to Vortexa data has imported 790,000t of bitumen this year, even more reliant on cargo imports.

While some UK market players have been informed that the Prax bitumen closure could happen as early as the first quarter of 2023, another with close off-take arrangements from the refinery said a second quarter halt was planned. Prax Group said today it could not comment on "commercially sensitive information".

The refinery has grappled with a number of disruptions to its bitumen output over the past year. In October, an unspecified issue hit bitumen production at the refinery and buyers with purchasing agreements from the plant were unable to offtake volumes. The refinery also experienced feedstock supply issues in August this year, which led to interruptions to bitumen supply. The same issue occurred in November 2021.

The refinery produces about 300,000 t/yr of bitumen and is one of only two bitumen producing plants in the UK, the other being the Shell/Nynas joint venture bitumen-focused refinery in Eastham, northwest England.

The UK is already a major net bitumen importer, bringing in 790,000t this year, according to Vortexa, with the market well prepared to take on additional imports.

TotalEnergies is upgrading its Teesside terminal to reach an estimated 20,000-30,000t of bitumen storage capacity, with that expansion scheduled for completion by the end of March 2023. That will be followed sometime in the middle of 2023 by a new Bristol bitumen storage terminal and blending facility at Avonmouth, west England, being installed by Colas unit Continental Bitumen.

By Tom Woodlock and Keyvan Hedvat


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