Page 10 - DMEA Week 12 2020

DMEA REFINING DMEA
Liberia to commission first refinery
LIBERIA
Liberia relies on imports for all of its fuel needs.
LIBERIA, which is just emerging from a months- long fuel crisis, is preparing to commission a 10,000 barrel per day (bpd) modular refinery in its capital Monrovia.
The project is operated by locally-owned Conex Oil and Gas Holdings and will be built at the company’s existing petroleum storage ter- minal in the city. A factory acceptance test for the refinery was due to take place this week, its Houston-based manufacturer VFuels said on social media.
Conex is building the plant as part of the sec- ond-phase development of its 550,000-tonne petroleum storage terminal, which has been in operation since 2016. Its partner in the project is the state-owned Liberian Petroleum Refinery.
The company has not disclosed a definitive timeframe for initiating production at the refin- ery. But it was originally scheduled to come on stream within 24 months of the project’s launch in April last year.
Liberia relies on imports for all of its fuel needs. The precariousness of its situation was exposed this year when incorrect stock checks at its fuel storage facilities and constraints at its port led to months of fuel shortages. This put pressure on the country’s economy, which is already reeling from inflation and currency depreciation.
Conex also announced this week it had struck a deal to acquire the fuel marketing business of France’s Total in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The deal, the company said, would establish it as a market leader in fuel supplies in the region.
“We are excited about the expansion of Conex throughout these countries because this will cre- ate jobs and promote development in the areas into which we expand,” CEO Cherif Abdallah said in a statement.
Conex did not say how much it would be paying for Total’s fuel marketing business. The French major is Liberia’s biggest fuel importer. ™
Israeli fuel supplier reports 69% decline in profits
ISRAEL
Paz supplies around a third of Israel’s fuel needs.
ISRAEL’S top refined fuels distributor Paz reported a 69% fall in quarterly profit on March 26, blaming the decline on weaker refin- ing margins and the temporary closure of its Ashdod refinery so that a cat cooler could be installed.
Its adjusted net income came to ILS23mn ($6.3mn) for the October-December period, down from ILS75mn a year earlier. It also reported a reduction in the goodwill value of the Ashdod plant of ILS566mn.
Revenues were down 18% at ILS2.96bn, and its refining business suffered an ILS26mn oper- ating loss, versus an ILS7mn profit in the final quarter of 2018.
Paz warned it was in for a tough start to this year as well, with its refining segment set to book an ILS100-120mn loss in the first quarter if cur- rent refining margins, oil prices and sales vol- umes do not change.
The company also said it had delayed taking a decision on distributing dividends from its 2019 profits until after it had returned to an orderly work routine.
“At the present time, the company’s board of directors believed that it would be better to keep cash in the company’s funds until the situation
stabilised,” it said.
Paz supplies around a third of Israel’s fuel
needs. In addition to its refinery in Ashdod, it also controls fuel product storage and distri- bution terminals and a chain of hundreds of filling stations, convenience stores and retail complexes.
Paz’s CEO Yona Fogel is due to step down on March 31 – a decision he took in September last year following an alleged dispute with the com- pany’s chairman Avraham Bigger over plans to spin off its real estate activities. ™
P10
w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m
Week 12 26•March•2020