Italy's Venezia Refinery Resumes Operations After Six Months of Inactivity

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Eni SpA (NYSE:E) (Rome, Italy) has resumed activities at its 80,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Venezia Refinery after six months of being shutdown because of poor market conditions and economic issues that have caused several losses for the company over the past few years.

The Venezia Refinery is located in the Porto Marghera region, in northeastern Italy. From its 80,000-BBL/d production capacity, it has conversion rates of about 22%. The refined products are sold to the northeastern Italy and Austrian markets. With 21 processing units, the refinery has about 400 employees that began working again during the restart process and have continued with regular operations at the site. The refinery was completely shut down on October 27, 2011, and began the restart process in late April 2012. The refinery resumed processing at normal capacity in early May.

During the shutdown, only minor maintenance was performed, as in March 2011 the refinery underwent a 68-day major turnaround in all units. A major plant-wide turnaround will take place in March 2014; however, minor turnaround work on the 13,500-BBL/d thermal cracker and 27,900-BBL/d visbreaker unit is scheduled to occur in March 2013.

Low refining margins remain an issue in the local market, and even with the Venezia Refinery restart, economic growth is uncertain. At Eni's 130,500-BBL/d Gela Refinery, the Topping 1 unit, Vacuum unit, FCCU and delayed coking unit have been offline since May 2011.

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