LONDON, 6 March 2004 — Saudi Aramco has firmed up its 2004 refinery maintenance program that will see three plants shut down in the second quarter, industry sources said on Thursday.
They said bunching up the turnarounds within a tight two-month period will not cause any major oil product export disruption.
“The shutdowns are mainly to the domestic refineries, which will have very little impact on the export market. Also Aramco has built up stocks ahead of the shutdown and have cut back second quarter term sales,” one source familiar with the refinery operations told Reuters.
Saudi Aramco is slated to shut Rabigh, Yanbu and the new condensate splitter at Ras Tanura for maintenance from the mid-March onward.
The 425,000 barrels per day Rabigh refinery will be shut from second half of March for 45 days, the 200,000 bpd condensate splitter for at least a month from end March or early April while the 225,000 bpd wholly-owned domestic Yanbu refinery will be down for 25-30 days from April 20.
Industry sources were initially expecting the new condensate splitter to close for its one-year maintenance sometime in August in line with its start up date last year.
They said Aramco had only allocated small volumes of gas oil from the Rabigh refinery in its latest term tender while at Ras Tanura stocks of gas oil, naphtha and jet fuel have been built up recently to ensure that exports are smooth.
Aramco’s crude exports worked out at 485,000 bpd over a month or just under the 650,000 bpd of crude processing capacity that will be lost for around 35 days due to the maintenance.
The company last month chartered seven very large crude carriers to ship crude oil from Ras Tanura to the United States Gulf coast from the second half of February to early March.
The only other major maintenance planned in the Middle East this year that has been confirmed is a three-month long program at the 250,000 bpd Sitra refinery in Bahrain. Turnaround works at the refinery will be carried out in two phases from August to October.
Details of Iranian refinery maintenance works were not immediately available.
Earlier in the year the 200,000 bpd Shuaiba refinery in Kuwait and one condensate splitter at the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. were shut for maintenance works. The 140,000 bpd splitter resumed operations in early January while Shuaiba was up and running by end January.
Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco offered via private negotiation 80,000 to 100,000 tons of 380-centistoke high sulfur fuel oil for late March lifting, traders said yesterday.
The firm offered the cargo for March 23-25 loading from the eastern port of Jubail on a free-on-board basis.