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capacity of Tupras accounts for 57% of the country’s total storage capacity.
On April 30, Tupras said that it would halt production at its 220,000-barrel-per-day Izmir oil refinery from May 5 to July 1 having revised down its 2020 expectations.
The refinery’s annual production capacity of 11.9mn tonnes makes up 40% of Tupras’ 30mn-tonne overall capacity, with the refiner also operating capacities of 11.3mn tonnes in Izmit, 5.4mn tonnes in Kirikkale and 1.4mn tonnes in Batman.
On March 30, Reuters quoted unnamed trading sources as saying that Tupras cut runs at its Izmir refinery by 50%, at its Izmit refinery by 20% and its Kirikkale refinery by 50%.
Earlier in April, the company lowered its production expectation for 2020 from 28mn tonnes to 24mn tonnes and slashed its sales estimate from 29mn tonnes to 25mn tonnes due to declines in demand.
On April 16, Fitch Ratings revised its outlook on Tupras to negative from stable, while affirming the company at 'BB-', three notches below investment grade, in line with Turkey’s sovereign rating.
Fitch also advised that Tupras has a policy of distributing large dividends, “but in light of the weaker results we do not expect the company to pay dividends in 2020 and 2021”.
In February, Tupras opted not to distribute a dividend from its TRY526mn of 2019 profit, which was down 86% y/y, since it closed the fiscal year with a TRY1.14bn loss in terms of the Tax Procedural Law records.
In March 2019, Tupras paid a TRY12.87 net cash dividend per share, marking a 12.03% dividend yield.
In October 2017, Tupras issued $700mn worth of seven-year eurobonds (XS1686704948) with a coupon of 4.5%.
Revenues of Tupras, owned by the country’s largest industrial group Koc Holding, dropped to TRY16.9bn in Q1​ from TRY21bn in the same quarter of 2019 as demand for oil products declined due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and much lower oil prices took a toll.
The refiner’s Q1 capacity utilisation rate (CUR) declined to 85% from 94% a year ago while total production fell by 10% y/y to 6mn tonnes.
Turkish state energy company Botas in April ​bought​ a Yamal LNG cargo in the spot market from Total, one of Russian private gas producer Novatek’s partners​ at the Yamal plant in Russia. Rebecca Chia, an analyst with data intelligence firm Kpler which tracks LNG shipments globally, told Reuters that a 65,000-tonne cargo originating from Yamal was delivered to Botas on April 13 after a ship-to-ship (STS) transfer.
Chia said that the only previous Yamal-origin LNG cargo was delivered to Turkey in early 2019.
Russia supplies gas to Turkey via the TurkStream and Blue Stream undersea pipelines traversing the Black Sea. They have a total capacity of 32bn cubic metres (bcm) per year.
Gazprom sales to Turkey fell by 35% to 15.5 bcm last year.
Gazprom planned maintenance at Blue Stream for May 13-19 but the works
58​ TURKEY Country Report​ June 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com