Europe refinery maintenance lightest since February

European refiners are conducting their lightest load of maintenance work since mid-February, as the spring season for turnarounds draws to a close having been prolonged by unplanned problems and delayed restarts.

Argus research suggests the amount of crude distillation capacity shut in around Europe is now just 600,000 b/d, compared with more than 1mn b/d almost every week in the previous three months. In the middle of the summer and winter, the scale of European maintenance downtime usually drops below 500,000 b/d.

The largest maintenance work still in progress is at Repsol's 220,000 b/d Cartagena refinery in Spain, although a number of approaching crude tankers there may herald an imminent restart. Italian Eni's 88,400 b/d Livorno refinery is offline and may never run crude again, as the company has long discussed converting it to process biofuels only.

Two refineries in Germany are still conducting partial maintenance work, with end-dates likely drawing near, as is one in Italy and one in Greece.

The IEA forecast in its May report on oil markets that European refining runs would rise to 12.4mn b/d or 87pc of capacity that month, just one percentage point and 100,000 b/d short of July last year, which itself was the highest runs since the eve of the pandemic in February 2020. Some delayed refining restarts in Germany appear to have postponed the recovery of runs until this month.

European refining faced its heaviest disruption of the year in March when maintenance coincided with strikes shutting down most of France's plants. Including the strike effects, Argus estimates that more than 1.6mn b/d of crude distillation capacity was closed around Europe in late March. This reflects units that were completely out of action, not simply operating below their capacity. Europe has around 14mn b/d of nameplate distillation capacity.

By Benedict George