Spain's Bilbao Refinery Faces Unplanned Shutdowns

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Unplanned shutdowns keep occurring at Repsol YPF SA's (NYSE:REP) (Madrid, Spain) 240,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) refinery in Bilbao, Spain. The plant is operated by Repsol subsidiary Petronor (Bilbao).

Because of unfavourable refining margins, the Bilbao refinery halted production at its Plant 2, which includes the 100,000-BBL/d Crude 2 unit, the Platformer 2 unit, and the Amine unit. The Area was closed in mid-September, and there is no confirmed date for the units to return to operations. For more details, view September 17, 2009, article - Repsol Suspends Refining Operations in Spain's Bilbao Refinery.

Separately, another unplanned shutdown took place at the refinery in the first week of November. At that time, workers from Petronor went on a strike. The labour dispute lasted approximately four days. The situation affected the production of the refinery, which was stopped from November 6 until November 10, when workers began a sequential restart of the processing units.

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