TotalEnergies' Donges refinery restart imminent

TotalEnergies has informed regional authorities it plans to restart its 222,000 b/d Donges refinery on the French Atlantic coast after a 17-month shutdown.

The restart will begin today and take until 3 May, the firm said.

A tanker of around 500,000 bl of US crude has been waiting to discharge since 26 April, according to Argus tracking. A second tanker is on route from Algeria with around 550,000 bl of Saharan Blend. Workers at the plant have said crude storage there is nearly empty.

Donges has not processed any crude since December 2020, when TotalEnergies shut it down for economic reasons arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. It then missed several proposed restart dates, and stayed closed for an extended turnaround that began last autumn.

TotalEnergies planned to resume operations on 11 March, then deferred to 28 March, but missed both dates. Two crude tankers which had been slated to discharge at Donges in March and April diverted away from the refinery, and workers went on strike over the use of fixed term contracts.

TotalEnergies has not had its entire domestic refinery fleet running since the autumn of 2019, when it shut the 240,000 b/d Gonfreville unit following an explosion. Gonfreville resumed operations last summer. When a turnaround now underway at the company's 105,000 b/d Feyzin plant near Lyon is over TotalEnergies will have all its 567,000 b/d of capacity online.

The firm definitively closed it 93,000 b/d Grandpuits unit at the start of 2021.

By Adam Porter