Attock Refinery shuts two crude distillation units

Attock Refinery Ltd has shut down two of its crude distillation units temporarily to manage refinery operations, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Tuesday. The refinery, which has a nameplate capacity of 53,400 barrels per day, said it’d be operating at a throughput of about 60 per cent going forward because the despatch pattern of petrol and diesel for the current month continues to remain depressed. “This, if continued, would result in the curtailment of crude intake from oilfields with an adverse effect on associated gas as well,” it said. Stocks of petrol and diesel at Attock Refinery Ltd reached “very high levels” with very little/no ullage in storage tanks, especially those containing petrol, it said. Ullage refers to the empty space in a refinery’s storage tanks. Buyers of petrol and diesel, which are oil marketing companies (OMCs) that operate retail fuel stations, aren’t lifting the products from the refinery, which has forced the crude oil processor to reduce operations for the time being.