The UK fuel import terminal taking shape on the site of the former Coryton refinery will start receiving cargoes in the fourth quarter of 2013, traders said Wednesday. But the terminal is unlikely to operate at capacity until 2014, they said.
Coryton ceased all refining activities in June 2012 after its owner Petroplus went bankrupt and the administrator for the facility failed to find a buyer. Vopak, Shell and Greenergy bought the site later that month, but not to use it as refinery, rather to convert it into an import-and-storage terminal.
It will be known as Thames Oil Port, with initial storage capacity of around 500,000 cubic meters and the potential to expand to as much as 1 million cu m.
The consortium that bought Coryton confirmed this week that work was still ongoing on converting the refinery into an import terminal and that it aimed to open it in the second half of the year. It declined to comment further on the terminal's launch date.
"Coryton has been put back to Q4, but the main shareholders aren't going to move all their volumes there straight away," said one trader who regularly imports fuel into the UK. "It has to be reliable, so it will perhaps not be this year for the flows," he added.
The trader said that some test vessels had recently berthed at the terminal. "I would think that the terminal's shareholders are committed to their current term contracts ... we're unlikely to see major flows of oil before next year," said another trader.
The closure of the Coryton refinery in 2012 resulted in an increase in diesel and jet fuel imports into the UK, two refined products that are not produced in large enough volumes in the country to meet demand. The new terminal will be able to take larger vessels of jet fuel and diesel. This will come in handy as diesel vessels of 60,000 mt have recently been exported from the US to Europe, a trend that has not been seen before, according to traders.
Coryton, on the Thames Estuary in Essex, employed around 900 staff and supplied about 20% of the fuel for London and southeast England.