Petroplus Ceases Operations at French Reichstett Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources Europe (Galway, Ireland)--On April 1, Petroplus Holdings AG ceased operations at its 85,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Reichstett Refinery, which is in the Alsace region of northern France, after almost four months of operating at slow rates.

Created in 1963 by Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A) (The Hauge, Netherlands), the Reichstett Refinery feeds from the Fos-sur-Mer pipeline and specialises in a wide range of products, such as bitumen, fuel, gas oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and carburants; most of which supply eastern France, Germany and Switzerland.

By March 31, 2008, Petroplus Holdings AG had invested about $785 million in the acquisition of the refinery, together with the 154,000-BBL/d Petit-Couronne, which is in the Haute-Normandie region.

Two years later, Petroplus announced a strategy to evaluate activities for the site after a drop in refining profit margins that also affected Total S.A.'s (NYSE:TOT) 137,000-BBL/d Flanders Refinery, which has been shut down since September 12, 2009, and the closure of the 158,000-BBL/d D9 (the smallest of two Crude Distillation units) and associated units at Total's 364,000-BBL/d Gonfreville Refinery, which is considering the shuttering of the 43,700-BBL/d FCC and associated units from the Deep Conversion 2 area in third-quarter 2012.

On October 21, 2010, Petroplus announced the beginning of a process for a project to cease activities and convert the Reichstett Refinery into a terminal, after no offers were made for the acquisition of the site.

Finally, on April 1, 2011, after four months of operating at a 50% rate, the 85,000-BBL/d crude distillation unit, the 43,700-BBL/d vacuum unit, the 24,800-BBL/d gas-oil HDS, a naphtha hydrotreater, the 14,800-BBL/d napththa catalytic reformer, the 17,100-BBL/d FCC and associated units were shut down permanently.

The Reichstett Refinery is the second Petroplus refinery forced to shut down due to poor economic margins, after the 117,000-BBL/d Petroplus Teeside in United Kindom, which halted production in mid-May 2009.

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