Repsol sees Spanish refineries back to normal in a week

Spanish Market: Crude oil, LPG, Oil products, Petrochemicals
30/04/25

Adds chief executive's comments and further detail on refineries

Repsol said it expects its five Spanish refineries to return to normal operations within a week following the nationwide power outage on Monday, 28 April.

The company confirmed that power was restored to all its refineries on Monday evening, allowing the restart process to begin. It will take three days to restart the crude distillation units and 5-7 days to restart secondary conversion units, with hydrocrackers taking the longest, according to chief executive Josu Jon Imaz.

A momentary and unexplained drop in power supply on the Spanish electricity grid caused power cuts across most of Spain and Portugal, disrupting petrochemical plants and airports, as well as refineries.

Imaz noted that Repsol was fortunate that its refineries avoided damage from petroleum coke formation and other solidification processes during the shutdown. Repsol's 220,000 b/d Petronor refinery in Bilbao was the first to restart, thanks to electricity imports from France, he said.

Petroleum reserves corporation Cores has temporarily reduced Spain's obligation to hold 92 days of oil product consumption as strategic reserves by four days, mitigating potential supply issues from the outage.

Repsol's refining margin indicator, a benchmark based on European crack spreads weighted to the firm's product basket, has been recovering this week and stood at $7.5/bl this morning, compared with an average of $4.2/bl in April and $5.3/bl in the first quarter, according to Imaz.

The company posted a 70¢/bl premium to the indicator in January-March on refinery optimisation and use of heavier and cheaper crudes. This was lower than the $1.20/bl premium it reported in 2024 and negatively affected by the high water content in first-quarter deliveries of heavy Mexican Maya, a staple for Repsol's more complex refineries.

The high water cut in the Maya receipts shaved a potential 50¢/bl from Repsol's refining margin premium in the first quarter, and operational issues at the company's Tarragona refinery a further 20¢/bl, according to Imaz.

Repsol has already completed the three major refinery maintenance projects for 2025 it flagged at its Bilbao, Tarragona and Puertollano refineries. Work on the three refineries in the first quarter cut about 40¢/bl from the firm's refining margin.

The three factors point to a combined $1.10/bl shortfall in the firm's refining margin in the first quarter and were one of the reasons for the 80pc fall in adjusted profit at Repsol's refining-focused industrial division to €131mn ($149mn) in January-March from a year earlier and the 62pc fall in group profit to €366mn.

By Jonathan Gleave

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19/05/25

German gasoil demand down on rising prices

Hamburg, 19 May (Argus) — Traders in Germany bought significantly less heating oil in the week to May 18, after many stocked up when prices fell in the previous week. Rising prices have dampened demand, and heating oil inventories are at their highest May level in four years. Traded spot volumes for heating oil reported to Argus fell by almost 45pc on the week as inland prices for heating oil and diesel rose notably in the week for the first time since the end of March. Spot sales in the week ending May 11 has resulted in national average heating oil inventories above 50pc, according to Argus MDX data. The last time German inventories were more than half full at this time of year was in May 2021. Given the unusually high inventories and rising prices, many heating oil buyers are waiting before becoming active again. Diesel demand also fell, with traded spot volumes reported to Argus down by 23pc in the week ending May 18. But industrial end-users' inventories are at their lowest May level in five years, according to Argus MDX data. By Johannes Guhlke Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

US House panel votes down Republican megabill

16/05/25

US House panel votes down Republican megabill

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PETCORE Europe Thermoforms: Collection is key

16/05/25

PETCORE Europe Thermoforms: Collection is key

London, 16 May (Argus) — Ahead of the Petcore Europe Thermoforms Conference in Dijon, France on 27-28 May, the technical manager of Petcore Europe's thermoforming working group, Jose-Antonio Alarcon, spoke to Argus about progress in the European tray-to-tray recycling market. Since we attended the annual event last year in Granada, Spain what has changed for the market? We don't see big changes. Collection is mostly the same, but there have been some developments on recycling projects. The appetite for recycling of tray-to-tray is growing. We have seen more players coming to operate in the tray-to-tray market over the last year, and more capacity is expected to start during this year. Petcore are aiming to make an study of the state of play for the thermoform industry in Europe to have a clear view on the real market size and the final application usage. 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Is the difficult business environment across the whole industry an additional challenge for scaling up tray-to-tray? Of course there are challenges. We need to look at how the bottle recycling market has changed in the past 15 years with collection, technology, volume, quality, capacity etc., and the tray market is much later in the in the evolution, so it will take some time in order to achieve a similar situation as the bottle market. Of course, we expect that the speed of acceleration to reach the point of maturity to be faster for trays because we can take some learnings from previous experiences. Five years ago, trays were considered a contaminant at bottle sorting plants, and what we see today is that trays have the possibility to be a properly recycled stream providing another outlet of waste for sorters and recyclers. We need the material to be collected and it will require investment of course. The current infrastructure may be sufficient if managed properly. 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Trump says US will soon set new tariff rates

16/05/25

Trump says US will soon set new tariff rates

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Kuwait's Kufpec gets OK to develop Indonesian gas field

16/05/25

Kuwait's Kufpec gets OK to develop Indonesian gas field

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