Italian integrated oil firm Eni has resumed bitumen production at its 88,400 b/d Taranto refinery in southern Italy, according to a source familiar with the plant's operations.
The restart comes much earlier than had been indicated in early July, shortly after the halt in the refinery's bitumen operations. A source close to the refinery had said at the time that the bitumen shutdown would continue for a few months.
Market participants had said the disruption was caused by an unexpected halt to the refinery's vacuum distillation unit (VDU), which had stopped cargo export loadings and truck supplies.
The VDU, which supplies vacuum residue feedstock for Taranto's bitumen production, is understood to have restarted, enabling bitumen output to resume gradually. But the unit has yet to return to full operations.
Eni is still maintaining force majeure on bitumen supply to some customers, including one cargo customer that had agreed term flows from the refinery this year.
Small-scale truck supplies were reported out of Taranto by Italian market participants in the first week of August. The first bitumen tanker to load a cargo at Taranto since early July, the 7,645 dwt 3B Destiny, completed loading on 14 August. The cargo will be shipped to Lebanon, mainly into Beirut.
BB Energy Group's trading affiliate 3B Trading owns and operates the vessel, which was re-delivered to it by Algerian state-owned Sonatrach's Hyproc shipping arm with effect from 1 April.
Market participants said a switch from running onshore bitumen-rich Italian crudes such as Tempa Rossa to imported seaborne cargoes of alternative crude slates may have contributed to the technical problems with the VDU.
The refinery has continued to receive seaborne crude and has also delayed a planned turnaround because of strong refining margins. Eni's head of industrial change Giuseppe Ricci said in July that maintenance had been expected in September, "but we are moving this shutdown for a couple of months in order to gain all of the period" of anticipated strong margins.
