Page 15 - DMEA Week 27

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Izmir plant resumes production

TURKEY THE largest Turkish refiner, Tupras, is gradually company’s revenues increased 1.2% last year
bringing Izmir Refinery units online, in line with from 2018. Tupras was also the fifth-largest
The 220,000 bpd its previously announced schedule, according to exporter in Turkey.
refinery shut down in a stock exchange filing. Turkey’s largest conglomerate, Koc Holding,
early May. On April 30, Tupras said that it would halt controls 51% of Tupras via subsidiaries. The
production at its 220,000 barrel per day (bpd) remaining 49% is free-float. Turkey’s privatisa-
Izmir oil refinery from May 5 to July 1, having tion administration has one golden share.
revised down its 2020 expectations. Tupras reported a net loss of TRY2.27bn
The refinery’s annual production capacity of (€324mn) for the first quarter of 2020 versus a
11.9mn tonnes (tpy) makes up 40% of Tupras’ loss of TRY375mn in the same period a year ago.
30mn tpy overall capacity. Sales volumes recorded by Tupras declined
On March 30, Reuters quoted unnamed trad- by 14.5% on an annual basis to 6.2mn tonnes in
ing sources as saying that Tupras had cut runs at Q1. ™
its Izmir refinery by 50%, at its Izmit refinery by
20% and its Kirikkale refinery by 50%.
In April, the company lowered its production
expectation for 2020 from 28mn tpy to 24mn tpy
and had slashed its sales estimate from 29mn tpy
to 25mn tpy due to declines in demand.
On April 16, Fitch Ratings revised its outlook
on Tupras to negative from stable, while affirm-
ing the company at ‘BB-’, three notches below
investment grade, in line with Turkey’s sovereign
rating.
Tupras has, as usual, ranked first on Fortune
magazine’s top 500 Turkish companies list, with
sales at Turkish lira (TRY) 89.6bn ($13bn). The

Libya’s Mesla oilfield back online

LIBYA AGOCO, a subsidiary of Libya’s National Oil crude oil, which is one of Libya’s main sources
Corp. (NOC), has reportedly resumed produc- of hard currency. They also caused production
Production slated for tion at Mesla, an oilfield in the eastern part of levels to drop by more than 800,000 bpd and bot-
delivery to 10,000 bpd the country that has been offline for almost six tom out below 100,000 bpd.
Sarir refinery. months. Before the blockade began in January, Mesla
According to an engineer working at the field, typically yielded around 60,000-80,000 of oil.
Mesla was restarted on June 30. The engineer did This is roughly equivalent to 20-27% of Agoco’s
not say how much crude the site was producing, output, which went up to 300,000 bpd.
but he did tell Argus Media last week that Agoco
was sending all of its crude to the 10,000 barrel Exports down
per day (bpd) Sarir refinery for processing. The In related news, Bloomberg reported on July 5
plant usually handles oil from Agoco’s al-Bayda, that NOC was on track to export two crude car-
Hamada, Mesla, Nafoora and Sarir fields. goes this month.
As of press time, NOC had not confirmed According to initial loading programmes
the resumption of development operations at viewed by the news agency, the company is lift-
Mesla. Argus Media had reported earlier last ing one cargo of 600,000 barrels from the Bouri
week that as of June 29, Agoco was still waiting terminal and another cargo of the same size
for its parent company to grant formal approval from Farwah. This will bring monthly export
to its restart plans. volumes up to 1.2mn barrels, down by 33.3% on
Mesla is one of many Libyan oilfields that the June figure of 1.8mn barrels.
was forced to suspend production after troops NOC is currently producing about 110,000
loyal to Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the Libyan bpd of oil. The company says it has lost more than
National Army (LNA), mounted a blockade of $6bn this year as a consequence of the blockade
key infrastructure facilities such as pipelines and by the LNA and its supporters, which are bat-
export terminals. These events prevented NOC tling the Tripoli-based Government of National
from transporting, processing and exporting Accord (GNA) for control of the country. ™

Week 27 09•July•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15