OMV updates timeline for Schwechat refinery restart

OMV Aktiengesellschaft, Vienna, is progressing with repairs required to restart its 9.6-million tonne/year refinery at its integrated complex in Schwechat, Austria, following an early June mechanical upset impacting the site’s main crude oil distillation unit (CDU) at the end of its 2022 turnaround (OGJ Online, June 3, 2022).

With repair works proceeding well and on schedule, OMV plans to start the commissioning and ramp-up phase of the refinery’s restart during the first half of October, after which the site will progressively resume supply of products to the markets it serves, the operator said on Sept. 15.

In the meantime, OMV said it will maintain the alternative supply system established in the wake of the June incident for as long as necessary to continue reliable product deliveries to customers during the repair period.

Alongside securing temporary supplies of downstream feedstock and products from other OMV refineries and cooperating with partners and logistics affiliates to purchase products to replace supply shortfalls during repairs on Schwechat’s main CDU, OMV also maximized distillation capacity of a smaller available CDU covering about 20% of the site’s pre-incident capacity, Michael Sattler, senior vice-president of OMV’s value chain optimization and head of the refinery investigation task force, said on June 24.

In the aftermath of the June incident, the Austrian government also released fuel from the country’s strategic oil reserves to help supply product to the market.

In its second-quarter 2022 earnings presentation on July 28, OMV told investors it anticipated the Schwechat refinery to be running at full-utilization rates in a September-October timeframe. As of the late-July presentation, the operator said financial impact of the refinery incident and subsequent CDU outage stood at about €90 million.

OMV has yet to release its official determination of what caused damage to the outer shell of one of the CDU’s columns during a water-pressure test—which was legally required as part of the final stages of the turnaround—that led to the June 3 incident.