Burnaby refinery resumes operations following 13-week shutdown
Parkland Corp., Calgary, has restored normal operations at subsidiary Parkland Refining (B.C.) Ltd.’s 55,000-b/d refinery on Burrard Inlet in North Burnaby, near North Vancouver, BC, following the site’s unplanned shutdown in mid-January amid issues stemming from inclement weather conditions (OGJ Online, Jan. 24, 2024).
After initially beginning the restart process on Mar. 10, the Burnaby refinery resumed normal operations on Mar. 29, Parkland said on Apr. 1.
Alongside “accelerating maintenance and refining optimization work” previously scheduled for third-quarter 2024, the operator also undertook works “to improve organization-wide market profitability and enhance the refinery’s utilization and profitability for the remainder of [2024],” said Bob Espey, Parkland’s chief executive officer and president.
While Parkland did not reveal specific details of the works completed during the refinery’s extended downtime, Espey confirmed the company’s overall 2024 adjusted EBITDA guidance remains unchanged at $1.95-2.05 billion (Can.).
The Burnaby shutdown will, however, result in the refinery’s delivery of a composite utilization rate of about 20% and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $60-65 million for first-quarter 2024 for anticipated delivery of a company-wide quarterly total adjusted EBITDA of $300-320 million, Parkland said.
The extended shutdown at Burnaby began on Jan. 21 when the refinery encountered an issue during restart of an unidentified processing unit, the operation of which had been paused during the Jan. 12 extreme-cold weather event as part of the site’s routine safety plan.
To ensure reliability of supply during the shutdown period, Parkland increased imports of refined products into its on-site shipping terminal to be delivered to customers across the lower mainland of Vancouver Island.
The refinery's blending, shipping, terminal, and rack activities remained operational, enabling refined fuels to be offloaded from ships and rail directly into the refinery for storage and subsequent distribution to customers.
The Burnaby refinery houses two main units—including a 25,000-b/d crude unit and a 30,000-splitter—designed to process Canadian light and medium crudes, as well as some synthetic Canadian crudes, all of which are delivered to the refinery from Edmonton, Alta., via the Trans Mountain pipeline.
The refinery is also the first in Canada to achieve coprocessing of Canadian-sourced biofeedstocks—including canola oil, tallow, and tall oil (a by-product from the pulp and paper industry)—using existing refining infrastructure (OGJ Online, Apr. 12, 2023).
During 2023, the Burnaby refinery coprocessed more than 91 million l. of biofeedstock, Parkland said in its 2023 annual report published in late-February 2024.
Robert Brelsford | Downstream Editor
Robert Brelsford joined Oil & Gas Journal in October 2013 as downstream technology editor after 8 years as a crude oil price and news reporter on spot crude transactions at the US Gulf Coast, West Coast, Canadian, and Latin American markets. He holds a BA (2000) in English from Rice University and an MS (2003) in education and social policy from Northwestern University.
