“The Refinery is being restarted safely at this time,” she said.
“Qatargas can confirm that there was an outage at Laffan Refinery, the Refinery was safely shutdown as a result and a full investigation has taken place.”
The cause and duration of the shutdown was not immediately clear and the spokeswoman did not say whether the refinery was able to meet all its commitments during the outage.
Gulf-based traders said the refinery was probably down for only a couple of days.
“I believe Trafigura and BP had deals with them and they were able to lift their cargoes,” one products trader said.
“This means there could only be delays possible for the next lifter.”
Qatar’s first condensate refinery, which started production in September 2009, can produce 61,000 bpd of naphtha, 52,000 bpd of kerojet, 24,000 bpd of gasoil and 9,000 bpd of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) when fully operational.
There is maintenance ongoing at Qatargas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains, which was planned to take place between mid-September and early November.
A trading source said last week that Qatar International Petroleum Marketing Co, or Tasweeq, did not award a tender to sell condensate for loading in November, which traders attributed to reduced availability of spot cargoes because of the maintenance.
Royal Dutch Shell’s 500,000 bpd refinery in Singapore, which produces similar products to the Laffan plant, is expected to remain closed for a month after a fire last week.
