Skip to main content

SRI LANKA TO RESTART REFINERY WITH OIL CARGO FROM DUBAI


Ceylon Petroleum Corp (Ceypetco) will resume operation of Sri Lanka’s sole refinery, a 50,000 barrels-per-day facility, after a 10-day closure, because it has received a cargo of 75,000 tonnes of crude from Dubai, officials said.

Sri Lanka’s decades-old refinery is configured to run on Iranian crude and has been scrambling to fill a shortfall after Western sanctions prevented it from bringing in the crude from Iran. The sanctions have hurt its economy by forcing it to spend more to import oil and oil products.

The refinery was shut on Oct. 26 after exhausting its supply of mainly Iranian crude oil, and its general manager, Susantha Silva, said it would be shut until the island nation received the Dubai cargo.

“We have received a 75,000-metric-tonne crude cargo and everything is arranged to unload,” Silva said in an interview on Monday. “If all goes well, we’ll be able to resume operations from tomorrow.”

Silva declined to comment on the origin of the cargo, but an oil ministry official said it came from Dubai.

“The cargo came from Dubai the day before yesterday and everything is now ready to unload,” the official said, on condition of anonymity.

He said the island nation would receive an 80,000 tonne crude cargo from Oman on Thursday, a 135,000 tonne cargo from Saudi Aramco Nov. 13-15 and another 135,000 tonne shipment in December.

Silva last week said the December shipment was from Abu Dhabi.

Exports from Iran, which is grappling with tough Western sanctions against its energy and petrochemical sectors, have fallen sharply as buyers struggle to pay for the oil and secure insurance cover for tankers to ship it.

Ceypetco has been having problems running the refinery at full capacity because alternative crudes such as Arabian light do not provide the proper yield, Silva said earlier.

The sanctions have so far compelled Sri Lanka’s $59 billion economy to spend an extra $1.2 billion on oil imports, Oil Minister Susil Premajayantha told parliament last month.

Sri Lanka has reduced imports of Iranian crude by a fifth this year but disagrees with Western sanctions that are punishing countries that depend on the oil, Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris has said.

The country is now in talks with Iran to find a suitable payment method, because banks dealing with Iran have also been targeted by Western sanctions. Iran has not offered any discounts on its crude, Peiris said.

Ceypetco’s Sapugaskanda refinery, on the outskirts of the capital, Colombo, was shut early in September also after damage to a floating pipeline at the Colombo port, Reuters reports.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ukrainians injured as police dismantle Kiev 'tent city'

At least 10 demonstrators have been injured in clashes with Ukrainian police and another 100 detained in the capital Kiev after authorities began dismantling a makeshift "tent city" protesting against corruption. The tent city was set up in October by supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia who has become an opposition politician in Ukraine. Saakashvili, a critic of corruption in Ukraine, was deported to Poland in February. He said he was "kidnapped" by Ukrainian authorities and removed from the country against his will. Andriy Kryshchneko, police chief of police, said at the camp on Saturday that "two court decisions" allowed authorities to search and dismantle the camp. Police said that explosives and other weapons were found at the scene
Post a Comment
Read more

ASSIGNING OF PREFERENTIAL NUMBERS FOR LG POLLS COMPLETED

The Election Secretariat announced that assigning preferential numbers for candidates of the Local Government election to be held for 67 bodies has been completed. Preparations are currently underway to hold the polls under the 2010 electoral register, Additional Elections Commissioner W.P. Sumanasiri said. The electoral register of the year 2010 is scheduled to be certified on June 31.
Post a Comment
Read more

In abrupt turnaround, Olympus admits it hid losses

Japan's Olympus admitted on Tuesday it hid losses on securities investments dating back two decades, bowing to weeks of pressure to explain a series of baffling transactions that have put the future of the firm in doubt. The revelations by the 92-year-old company appear to vindicate ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who has staged a campaign since being sacked on October 14 to force the firm to come clean on nearly $1.5 billion in questionable payments. Olympus President Shuichi Takayama blamed Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who quit as president and chairman on October 26, Vice-President Hisashi Mori and internal auditor Hideo Yamada for the cover-up, saying he would consider criminal complaints against them. The admission after weeks of denials shocked investors, sending shares in the endoscope and camera maker skidding almost 30 percent and prompting the biggest non-Japanese shareholder to demand the replacement of the entire board. "Ignorance is no defense," said Jo...
Post a Comment
Read more