Grupa Lotos SA has resumed operations at its 10.5 million-tonne/year refinery in Gdansk, Poland, following power outage on Feb. 8 that halted production at the site.
All units impacted by the outage were restarted and in operation as of Feb. 9, with no impact on external sales of products manufactured at the refinery, the operator said.
Operations at almost all refinery units were briefly suspended on Feb. 8 due after a 30-min disruption in electricity supply from Energa SA’s external Blonia 1 station occurred, according to a notice to investors regarding the unscheduled downtime.
Further details about the incident were not disclosed.
Otherwise, Grupa Lotos continues to advance work on its Effective Refining Program (EFRA), which is designed to increase the Gdansk refinery’s yield of high-margin middle distillates while simultaneously reducing in its output of less-profitable heavy products (OGJ Online, July 15, 2015).
Previously scheduled for startup during this year’s first half, the more than €500-million EFRA, once completed, will boost the refinery’s overall production of high-margin products (primarily diesel oil and aviation fuel) to about 900,000 tpy, as well as lift its refining margin by about $2/bbl.
While Grupa Lotos confirmed reaching an 85% completion rate on the project in a November 2017 presentation, the operator said in a Jan. 12 notice to investors that the ready-for-startup (RFSU) status of the project’s delayed coking unit may be postponed amid the risk of EFRA contractor KT-Kinetics Technology SPA’s inability to meet the contractual RFSU target set forth in a July 2015 agreement.
Grupa Lotos said it would disclose further information regarding matters impacting the status of the EFRA project in forthcoming company reports.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
