EU refineries challenges to cope with supply/demand scenarios at the 2015 horizon

摘要

Changes in product demand and crude supply require constant adaptation of the refining tool,taking all factors into account including the availability of dependable import and exportsources as an alternative to direct investment.For many years there has been a worldwide trend towards a larger proportion of distillateproducts in the demand barrel. Coupled with the increasingly heavier crude supplies this hasrequired investment in residue conversion units. In Europe the situation has been renderedmore critical because of a relentlessly growing imbalance between gasoline and middledistillate demand.CONCAWE has considered the changes that EU refineries will have to undergo in terms ofnew investments, total economic impact, energy consumption and CO_2 emissions in order tocope with a number of plausible supply/demand scenarios at the 2015 horizon. The mainfactors affecting the evolution of the refinery demand barrel are the demand for mobilityincluding the impact of non-technical measures to reduce demand, the development of freighttransport, the efficiency of the vehicles, the dieselisation rate of the EU car population, therate of introduction of biofuels and the availability of gasoline export markets and gasoil/dieselimport sources.There is adequate primary distillation capacity in Europe to meet the foreseen demand at the2015 horizon. The way refineries process crude oil must, however, be adapted in order tocope with changes in the product slate, particularly with regards to the relative demands formiddle distillates and gasoline. The gasoil/gasoline production ratio is clearly the single mostimportant parameter determining the process configuration that will be needed.The main investments required are in hydrocracking and some residue desulphurisation orconversion capacity, particularly in the most extreme scenarios. This has already started asseveral major conversion projects have been announced in EU refineries. This increase in thecomplexity of EU refineries goes hand in hand with an increase of energy consumption andtherefore CO_2 emissions.A continued increase of the gasoil/gasoline ratio would present a very serious challenge toEU refiners in terms of adaptation of their refineries, choice of processes and magnitude ofrequired investments. It would also lead to a further increase of refinery energy consumptionand CO_2 emissions.