MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petron Corp, the Philippines’ largest oil refiner and retailer, said it has temporarily shut down its 180,000-barrel-per-day Bataan refinery on the main island of Luzon, as the coronavirus lockdown pummelled global oil demand, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
“Since May 5, Petron’s Bataan Refinery has been on a scheduled turnaround to give way to maintenance activities on major process units,” the company said in a statement after posting its quarterly results.
The plant shutdown will also mitigate the impact of lean fuel demand and poor refining margins, Petron said, without giving details on when the refinery would resume operations.
Petron, a unit of conglomerate San Miguel Corp, provides nearly 30% of the Southeast Asian country’s petroleum requirements, with 30 terminals and more than 2,400 stations nationwide.
“Demand recovery will depend upon the lifting of quarantine measures and ultimately, finding a vaccine to fully restore mobility,” Petron President and Chief Executive Officer Ramon Ang said in a statement.
The oil refiner said it has enough fuel inventory to supply domestic market requirements that will be replenished through importation of finished products.
Earlier this month, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had temporarily increased tariffs on imported crude oil and refined petroleum products to fund measures aimed at mitigating the economic impact of the outbreak.
Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp has also shut down its 110,000-barrel-per-day Tabangao refinery in the Philippines, for one month starting the middle of this month.
Petron suffered a net loss of 4.9 billion pesos ($97 million) in the first quarter, compared with a net income of 1.3 billion pesos in a year-ago period, as fuel prices collapsed due to demand contraction in both local and international markets.
We also remind that Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island this week following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 557,060 tonnes in the first three month of 2020, up by 7% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments rose because of the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. Demand for LDPE subsided. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 267,630 tonnes in January-March 2020, down 20% year on year. Homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers accounted for the main decrease in imports.
MRC