Spanish oil companies Repsol and Moeve are restarting refineries and petrochemical plants after they were halted by a massive power cut across Spain and Portugal yesterday, 28 April.
Power has returned to Repsol's five Spanish refineries, which have a combined 890,000 b/d of capacity, and its two petrochemicals plants in Tarragona and Puertollano, as well as Moeve's 464,000 b/d of refining capacity and two petrochemicals plants in southern Spain.
Facilities are "restarting progressively" after power was restored from late on 28 April, according to the companies. They declined to say when they expect production to return to levels prior to the outages.
A momentary and as-yet-unexplained drop in power supply on the Spanish electricity grid of over 10GW at around 12.30 CET (10:30 GMT) caused power cuts across most of Spain and Portugal yesterday, shutting down industrial complexes.
The outage followed a localised and unexplained loss of power in Cartagena southern Spain on 22 April which shut down Repsol's 220,000 refinery for several days, the company confirmed.
Portugal's Galp has not yet responded to requests for confirmation that its 226,000 b/d Sines refinery in southern Portugal halted yesterday, although one worker at the facility confirmed to Argus that the refinery is restarting now after a "total shutdown" following the power cut.
BP said operations at its 108,000 b/d Castellon refinery in eastern Spain "have not been affected by the power outage" but the facility did "activate an emergency response plan" and is working "closely with local authorities to manage the situation."
Spain's dominant oil product pipeline and storage operator Exolum, whose facilities connect refineries and ports, and deliver to service stations, said its infrastructure is working "normally" today after yesterday's disruption, adding that it managed to supply essential services and airports with fuel throughout the blackout.
Repsol's 220,000 b/d Bilbao refinery, which has limited hydrocracking capacity and no major petrochemicals units, took just two days to return to prior production levels after a power outage caused a total shutdown in 2016.
Any recovery to normal functioning of a plant could take longer depending on the configuration of a particular refinery, whether any damage to units occurred and whether any petrochemical units were affected.
Airport operations
Aena — the firm that operates 48 Spanish airports — said that all airports in its network had fully resumed operations as of Tuesday morning. Airlines including Iberia, AirEuropa and Easyjet expect all flights to operate as scheduled today.
The power outage halted operations at airports in Spain, Portugal, Morocco and southern France. Morocco's National Airports Office (Onda) announced that check-in and boarding procedures have been fully restored at all airports in the country.
Around 500 flights were cancelled in Spain and Portugal, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium, after deducting double-counted flights between the two countries.
Lisbon airport was the worst hit, with 45pc of departures cancelled, as well as about 30pc of departures at Seville airport. Around 50 flights each were grounded at Madrid and Barcelona airports — Spain's busiest.
