Page 13 - DMEA Week 43 2021

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Zawiya refinery damaged in fighting

AFRICA LIBYA’S National Oil Corp. (NOC) said this With the larger Ras Lanuf (220,000 bpd)
week that its 120,000 barrel per day (bpd) Zaw- refinery currently not operational, Zawiya, 40
iya refinery had been “severely damaged” during km west of Tripoli, is the country’s largest active
fighting west of Tripoli. refinery. NOC also operates facilities at Tobruk
In a statement on its website, the company (20,000 bpd) and Sarir (10,000 bpd).
said: “Those involved held no regard for the lives Zawiya processes crude produced from the
of workers at the sites or to the damage that may El Sharara oilfield, which at 300,000 bpd is the
have caused to the capabilities of the Libyan state country’s largest.
and the livelihoods of citizens there.” Earlier this month, the Libyan government
It added that the fighting had caused damage and the NOC announced that work had begun
to eight of the facility’s product storage tanks, to construct a new refinery near El Sharara.
while damage to five storage tanks for base oils During a ceremony at NOC’s headquarters
and chemical additives had “resulted in the leak- in Tripoli, Sanalla said that the so-called South
age of large quantities from tank No. T9 for stor- Refinery would be built, completed and on
ing base oil”. stream within the next three years, noting that it
The electrical transformer that is the main would come in at a cost of around $500-600mn.
power supply for the facility’s oil mixing and fill- Sanalla noted that the facility was expected to
ing units was also damaged and structural dam- achieve an annual income of $75mn.
age was also caused in the oil mixing and filling The refinery will be run by NOC subsidiary
plant. Zallaf Co. to produce LPG, jet fuel and other
NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla was quoted products, including 1.4mn litres per day of gaso-
as saying: “Many of our facilities have been sabo- line and 1.1mn lpd of diesel.
taged during the past years as a result of clashes, The precise location and full throughput
but those damaged sites have been renovated and capacity have not yet been revealed but plans
returned to work. It may take years to repair [this have previously been announced for the con-
new damage], and could cost the Libyan state an struction of a 50,000 bpd unit near El Sharara.
exponential amount of money, which is difficult UK-based Petrofac previously carried out a fea-
to obtain.” sibility study, which it updated in 2020.™

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