Czech refinery outage forces Orlen Unipetrol to seek state help to meet diesel demand
Czech fuel company Orlen Unipetrol has had to request a loan of 50,000 m3 of diesel from state reserves to help meet demand because of an outage at the country's largest refinery, it said on Wednesday.
"Despite all the measures taken, including stopping fuel exports and ensuring increased imports, it is currently not possible to fully cover the demand for diesel fuel on the Czech market," it said. It has asked and been given approval to tap state reserves of diesel.
In July, a power outage at Orlen Unipetrol's refinery in Litvínov, in the northwest of the Czech Republic, damaged the ethylene unit, and significantly limited the operation of the site, the Czech unit of Polish refiner Orlen said on X.
The refinery resumed operations after repairs, but during the transition to full power, Unipetrol discovered another failure in the main compressor of the ethylene unit and had to shut down the steam cracker and reduce petrochemical production and fuel production again.
Unipetrol's second-largest Czech refinery in Kralupy, in the center of the country, remains in operation and the production of other fuels is sufficient, it said.
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