Lukoil’s 78,000 b/d Odessa refinery restarted bitumen production in August. Sources at the facility said about 5,000t of bitumen was produced in August. The unit is capable of producing about 17,000 t/month. The same sources said the bitumen production unit was restarted because of the sharp drop in fuel oil prices on export markets at the end of July into the beginning of August. Meanwhile, demand for bitumen on the domestic market in Ukraine is still high for August–September.
The Odessa refinery renewed operations in April after two-and-a-half years of modernisation. Along with launching a new visbreaking unit, the Odessa facility restarted its isomerisation unit which had been idle for two years. The isomerisation unit was built in 2004 using Penex UOP technologies.
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