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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Portugal’s Galp Energia
temporarily suspended fuel production at its smallest oil refinery at Matosinhos
due to unstable national and international markets shaken by the coronavirus
pandemic, according to Hydrocarboprocessing with
reference to a Galp spokesman's statement.
“Supply of the national market
is guaranteed to remain, with an adequate level of products to satisfy the needs
of the Portuguese, companies and industrial units,” he said in a
statement.
Galp said that although the suspension had no end date as yet,
no workers would be laid off.
The suspension, which began on Oct. 10, was
Galp’s second at the refinery this year, after one in April along with a halt at
its largest refinery in Sines. The two refineries comprise 20% of refining
capacity on the Iberian peninsula.
Galp resumed production
at both refineries in June, a month after Portugal slowly started to emerge from
a coronavirus lockdown.
Portugal has recorded nearly 90,000 confirmed
coronavirus cases and 2,110 deaths - far fewer than in many other European
countries. But the pandemic is set to leave lasting scars on the Portuguese
economy, with the government predicting gross domestic product to contract 8.5%
this year.
Earlier this year, Galp said it would kick off its green
business by installing renewable energy capacity of 10 gigawatts in the next
decade, enough to power millions of homes.
As MRC reported before,
earlier this year BP set one of the oil sector's most ambitious targets for
curbing emissions, although some environmental campaigners accused it of
greenwash and said it had not given enough detail on how it would achieve its
targets.
We remind that , in September 2019, six world's major
petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany,
and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announced the creation of a consortium
to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using
renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The Cracker of the Future
consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total,
aims to produce base chemicals while also significantly reducing carbon
emissions. The companies agreed to invest in R&D and knowledge sharing as
they assess the possibility of transitioning their base chemical production to
renewable electricity.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for
producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast
report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,496,500 tonnes in
the first eight months of 2020, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of all ethylene
polymers increased, except for linear low desnity polyethylene (LLDPE). At the
same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 767,2900 tonnes in the
eight months of 2020 (calculated using the formula - production minus exports
plus imports - and not counting producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020).
Supply increased exclusively of PP random copolymer. |
