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Dutch IGCC pioneers chalk up pain and gain Emergency response is behind schedule in the European public sector A new refining industry in Europe's Asian Corridor Commission proposes milestone energy proposal Replace fuel oil with distillate? Cancelled projects will sustain margins “Marine distillate not fuel oil from 2010” Branson's biofuels megastore You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway Buncefield 2: Investigation critical Where now for Swedish Class 1 diesel My slow awakening to climate change The luckiest motorist alive Safety row goes on over Europe's largest LNG terminal New WHO guidelines on city air quality put focus on diesel Would LNG really 'evaporate harmlessly' in an accident? Another lesson in the thermobaric bomb Spare a thought for the oil-rich But will the good times keep on rolling? Carbon storage and the zero emissions refinery Everything just changed E85 and high octane gasolines The problem of small-minded young engineers New Permit Regulations Biodiesel newbuilds and a new green superfuel Spilled wine and our split industry Drilling down into the prospects for IGCC The beginning of the start of the end of oil | Europe’s Asian corridor builds a new downstream industry The south east of Europe can feel more or less impenetrable to an English speaker based in the snowy north, so I was pleased to bump into my old friend Ozren in Italy the other day. Ozren lives in Serbia and works as Development Manager at the Pancevo refinery near Belgrade. He’s right in the midst of the dramatic changes in the region’s industry, so his perspective is an intimate one. He’s a warm-hearted enthusiast and talented chemical engineer who has had to face challenges which would defeat many a lesser man. Since salaries are relatively poor in Serbia, even for key figures in the country’s energy industry, Ozren made time to write the book Oil Refineries in the 21st Century, which deservedly found a home with publisher, John Wiley and Sons. Not that there’s been a lot of spare time over from his job of building up and then rebuilding (and I mean rebuilding) the country’s refining industry. Now he’s a key figure in preparing his refinery, part of state-owned NIS Petroleum Industries Serbia, for privatization. To say Ozren’s lived through interesting times is an understatement of a fairly high order. Pancevo lies 15km from Belgrade on the Danube. We first spoke when I called the war-torn capital to enquire after the fate of the refining team during military action by the US and the UK to stop the appalling Balkan hostilities. Ozren was lucky enough not to be at work the day the majority of 14 cruise missiles struck the refinery and neighboring petrochemical facilities. He lost friends and a career’s work as explosives peeled open the refinery with their notorious (through the control room window) precision. It’s a cruel irony that the community whose economy and environment was shattered by those events, was already rising up against the incumbent Milosevic regime. Ozren marched on the streets with the rest. When I spoke to him in Florence he’d recently been putting the final touches to a new report called Oil Industry of South Eastern Europe which is being published by Moscow-based RPI. It’s given him a chance to review what has been an extraordinary six or seven years for the region. In the table he supplied here only those few refining assets marked State have yet to figure in a wave of privatization. Everything’s happened since the turn of the century. Novi Sad and Pancevo in Serbia stand out as still in government hands. When sold later this year the new owners will be locked into a process of modernization equivalent to at least 25% of the purchase price. Ozren has been coveting his shopping list of new units for some time. After the bombings, he and his colleagues managed to rebuild the refinery’s process units, power plants and storage facilities and restart during a time when the neighbouring community did not even have mains electricity. Finally, Pancevo will have the hydrocracking and hydrotreating to ready it for 100% 2009 EU fuels quality. Serbia is experiencing around 5% average growth in its fuels market, trailing slightly behind gross national product. Product demand is set to rise to around seven million tonnes per year by 2015.So-called Corridor 10 is the route road haulage will take to reach central and western Europe from the growing south east and Asia.So, as the market girl sings in Oliver Twist, “Who will buy?” Ozren loves technology so he’d really like to see a major league global refiner invest – preferably a kind of dream team which he knows full well sounds very improbable. “A guy from the world bank asked me who would I prefer to invest as the new owner of the refinery,” he says. “My wish is a co-operation of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell,” he smiles. But if the table here is anything to go by, the new owner will not be so far flung. The gobal majors have absented themselves from South Eastern Europe’s reconstruction. Instead, Russia’s Lukoil and Gasprom Neft, Austria’s OMV, Hellenic Petroleum of Greece, MOL of Hungary have taken the leading role. Poland’s PKN Orlen is a player that could also join this wave of investors. But Ozren may yet come to work with at least one of the global majors he mentioned in his list. Lukoil certainly has the cash to move. “If Lukoil buys the refinery, then ConocoPhillips will be a part owner through its 18% stake in the Russian company. Then perhaps in the future they might increase their stake in NIS,” says Ozren. | ||||||||
Download Energy Industry Resumé with work samples Profile: Tim Lloyd Wright MA Here you'll find a brief profile of my work with international energy, transport and associated environmental issues. Energy trends articles You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway From the archive... Over-processed fuel leaves oil tankers adrift | |||||||||
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In the last seven or eight years, everything not marked state-owned on this table has been privatized. Source: RPI study. | ||
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