Adds HVO details from Eni
Operations to restart some of the fuel production lines at Italy's 88,400 b/d Livorno refinery will begin today after three months of planned maintenance, operator integrated oil firm Eni said. The longer term future of crude distillation at the unit remains unclear.
Eni said some fuel lines will begin output today, with flaring possible. Livorno has received no crude since the maintenance began on 29 April. It received nothing in July and no crude tankers are signalling arrival.
Some market participants had suggested the refinery might not restart at all, given that Eni has repeatedly mooted plans to construct a hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) plant at the site. It told unions in autumn 2021 that crude distillation would halt at the start of 2022.
The works at the refinery were the second three-month closure at Livorno since January 2022, a particularly long time for maintenance (see chart).
But Eni said on 28 July during its results presentation that it plans to construct an HVO unit at Livorno, the clearest signal yet that the plant will be built. Eni said the unit will be 500,000 t/yr and is slated for a 2025 startup. The firm said it will construct three units at Livorno — a feedstock pre-treatment plant, a hydrogen plant to supply the unit, and the 500,000 t/yr production unit itself.
Even though Eni outlined the Livorno HVO unit in its results literature, it is not clear if the construction has yet passed Eni's feasibility tests. This continues around four years of uncertainty over what Eni intends to do at Livorno. The firm has previously admitted it has struggled to make money from its HVO output.
Chief executive Claudio Descalzi said Eni is aiming to "combine biorefining with our marketing activities". The firm reiterated it would like 3mn t/yr of HVO production by 2025 and 5mn t/yr by 2030. But the firm did not mention whether the Livorno HVO startup in 2025 would mean the end to crude distillation at the site. Livorno also houses Eni's 600,000 t/yr Group I base oils unit.
Eni already has two HVO units in Italy, at Gela and Venice. The two plants have never run to their total nameplate capacity of 1.1mn t/yr, and Venice opened in 2014. The firm has long said it wants to expand output at Venice and that it would boost output to 560,000 t/yr from a current 350,000 t/yr, with the expansion starting in 2024. Further works by 2027 would increase the range of feedstock that Venice could take, the company said.
Eni said its second quarter HVO production of 140,000t was 55pc of nameplate capacity and 3pc lower on the year compared with the second quarter of 2022 because of planned downtime at Venice. Production in the first half of the year was 276,000t, around 54pc of capacity, compared with 235,000t in the first half of 2002. Then production was limited by unplanned downtime at Gela.
