A big Greek refinery called at by more than 30 tankers per month has driven down production after a fire caused serious damage to some of its facilities on the night to Wednesday.
Motor Oil, which operates a tanker terminal alongside its distillation units about 70 kilometres (43 miles) west of Athens, said in a stock exchange filing that it managed to put out the blaze but operates “at reduced capacity for the time being”.
The company, which is part of Greece’s sprawling Vardinoyiannis business empire, did not elaborate on how big the disruption to its operations is and how long it will continue.
Market sources are telling TradeWinds that one of the company’s two crude distillation units was damaged as a result of the fire and that it will be offline for repairs for several weeks, perhaps even a few months.
As a result, the company is expected to reduce its seaborne crude oil imports in the short to medium term. On the other hand, it will probably increase purchases of alternative feedstocks to use in its upgrading units.
One market source said that Motor Oil was relatively fortunate that the damage took place just shortly before the beginning of its scheduled periodical maintenance.
According to Signal Ocean platform data, Motor Oil’s Agioi Theodoroi terminal is serving an average of 31 vessels per month.
About 180 port calls have been registered there over the past six months. MR tankers made of 60% of those calls, with MR2s and suezmaxes accounting for 13% each. Vessels wait an average of 2.2 days there.
The cause of the fire, which broke out Tuesday afternoon at the southern part of the refinery and has been extinguished, remains unclear.
Three subcontractor workers suffered minor injuries from the fire and are currently in good health, the company said.
Motor Oil said it is fully insured in terms of material damage and income losses from “any discontinuation of operations”.
