Asesa refinery in Tarragona, Spain will shut for at least three weeks for maintenance work in March. The refinery is Repsol/Cepsa joint venture with capacity of 1.2mn t/yr bitumen production.
The halt will happen at the start of road construction season and obviously affect the current bitumen consuming projects, though it won’t impact the most active period of the season from April to October.
A little over 10,000 b/d of crude was received by Asesa refinery last year, including considerable amounts of Albania’s bitumen-rich Patos-Marinza. The remaining 14,000 b/d of its capacity was supplied by refinery residues from the Tarragona refinery and some residues from Cespa’s Algeciras and Huelva refineries.