Gunvor IBR Refinery in Belgium Resumes Operations

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Gunvor (Geneva, Switzerland) has completed the restart of its 110,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) IBR refinery in Antwerp, Belgium, which has been shut down due to poor market conditions and economics issues since January 9.

The refinery, which has been operational since1968, was first known as BRC (Belgian Refining Company). In 2006, the BRC refinery was purchased by Petroplus Holdings AG (VTX:PPHN) (Zug, Switzerland). By the end of December 2011, the company announced that it would stop operations at the BRC refinery; the 68,000-BBL/d Cressier refinery in France; 154,000-BBL/d Petit Couronne refinery in France; and reduce production rates at the 103,000-BBL/d Ingolstadt Refinery in Germany and the 172,000 BBL/d Coryton refinery (in the United Kingdom. Petroplus subsequently decided to sell the BRC and Cressier refineries. For more information, see May 7, 2012 article - Petroplus Sells Cressier and Antwerp Refineries to Trading Houses.

Upon obtaining the refinery, Gunvor changed the name of the refinery to IBR (Independent Belgian Refinery) and performed maintenance to ensure the units were in good operating condition. The restart process began in the first week of May and it took the units seven to 10 days to reach normal production rates. Separately, Gunvor has rescheduled a 42-day major plant-wide turnaround that will take place in October 2012. In normal conditions, inspection and maintenance turnarounds are performed every two to three years. The last planned plant-wide maintenance turnaround at IBR took place in May 2010.

IBR is the third-largest of the four refineries in Belgium after Exxon Mobil Corporation's (NYSE:XOM) 275,000-BBL/d refinery and Total SA's (NYSE:TOT) 360,000-BBL/d refinery, which are also located in the Antwerp industrial region.

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