The European Refining Blues

This is a guest post by Stephen Bowers (TOD user carnot) who works for Evonik, a major chemical company based in Germany. Stephen is a petroleum chemist with over 30 years experience and started his career as a mud logger drilling oil wells.

Oil refining in Europe enters a new phase as the combination of emissions legislation and dieselisation of transport fuels demand really starts to bite. In the past months we have seen the rather muted bankruptcy of a major independent refiner, Petroplus, which was set up in the last decade by one Thomas O'Malley, who had previously set up the independent and very successful refining group Valero. Petroplus, it would appear, tried to emulate the strategy of Valero, and in Europe purchased 7 refineries of rather mixed capabilities at relatively low... [via The Oil Drum]