A maintenance shutdown at Spanish firm Repsol's 220,000 b/d Bilbao refinery will hit the company's bitumen production hard, with no export volumes likely to be available from the facility for the next 1-2 months.
Repsol's Petronor subsidiary, which operates the refinery, has begun taking processing units offline in the conversion area as it starts a two-month turnaround. Argus understands that a vacuum distillation unit (VDU) is being shut as part of the work, which will directly hit bitumen units fed by vacuum residue feedstocks.
Although Bilbao's bitumen supplies are largely geared towards meeting domestic and other inland truck demand, Repsol last month loaded its first bitumen export cargo from Bilbao for several years, shipping it on the 4,900dwt Bitfjord to French Atlantic bitumen import terminals at Bayonne and Nantes.
Repsol has stepped up bitumen cargo exports from its 120,000 b/d La Coruna refinery on the Spanish Atlantic coast this year. It resumed export flows with a single cargo last year, having halted cargo exports altogether in 2022, according to Vortexa data.
La Coruna bitumen cargo exports have amounted to around 42,000t in 2024 so far, partly boosted by strong demand for imports in northwest Europe as buyers seek alternative sources during an unplanned halt at ExxonMobil's 236,000 b/d Port Jerome refinery in France following a fire in early March.
Spanish fob bitumen cargo differentials to fob Mediterranean high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) have moved to modest premiums after unusually languishing at a discount this year up until early May. Spanish bitumen differentials have faced pressure from firm HSFO values, as well as substantial bitumen export availability caused by weak domestic road construction activity. Demand for second half of May and June cargoes from Spanish Atlantic and Mediterranean export points is understood to be picking up as European demand gathers pace after a slow start to spring.
Spanish road paving work and bitumen demand have declined significantly since a surge in the first half of last year ahead of municipal elections in March and a general election in July. Latest data from Spain's state-owned petroleum reserves corporation Cores showed domestic sales of "asphalt products" at 43,232t in March, down by 55pc from the same period last year. Total Spanish bitumen consumption in the first quarter of this year stood at 155,901t, which was 29pc lower than a year earlier.
