The refinery in Mazeikiai, which has been undergoing extensive maintenance and repair since the beginning of May, has been put into operation at the Orlen Lietuva refinery, managed by the Polish oil concern PKN Orlen, and the first tankers have been reloaded at the Būtiņģe terminal after the buoy was replaced.
According to Kristīna Gendvile, a spokeswoman for the only refinery in the Baltics, repairs to the plant will be completed next week, but the plant is already operational and has pumped 100,000 tonnes of crude oil. She added that the plant would soon be supplied with the same amount of crude oil.
100,000 tonnes of WTI crude oil from the United States were pumped through the reopened Būtiņģe terminal last week, and another 100,000 tonnes of North Sea crude oil from a tanker arriving from Scotland was launched on Tuesday evening.
It took several days to unload the first tanker, as the new pumping system was set up during the process, Gendville said.
Maintenance work at Orlen Lietuva has continued since the beginning of May and production has been completely shut down. Such extensive maintenance work at the Mazeikiai factory is usually performed every four years, and this year the cost of maintenance and repair work reaches 80 million euros.
The previous major maintenance works at the factory in Mažeikiai were in 2018. They were carried out in several stages and the plant was not completely shut down.
In 2022-2024, Orlen Lietuva plans to make the largest investments since 2006, when it took over the plant in Mažeikiai. At the end of October, the company signed a 641 million euro contract with the British oil services company Petrofac for the modernization of an oil deep refining plant at the Mazeikiu plant.
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