http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22125/story.htm
Imperial Oil refits refinery for low-sulfur gas CANADA: September 5, 2003 CALGARY, Alberta - Imperial Oil Ltd. IMO.TO said yesterday it finished an C$80-million ($58-million) refit of one of its refineries to meet new Canadian environmental regulations, one day after a rival said it was shutting a plant down to avoid the cost. Imperial, Canada's biggest oil producer and refiner, said its 88,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which traces its roots back to 1916, began pumping low-sulfur fuel more than a year before the tight standards take effect. It is part of a C$575-million, 14-month project to retool each of the company's four refineries across the country to produce gasoline with less than 30 parts per million of sulfur, which must be done by Jan. 1, 2005. Imperial, majority-owned by U.S. oil supermajor Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM.N , expects all the plants will be producing low-sulfur products, and its Esso-brand gas stations selling them, by the end of November, Imperial spokesman Pierre Desrochers said. Petro-Canada, the country's No. 2 player, said on Wednesday it was closing its 90,000 bpd Oakville, Ontario, refinery by the end of next year with the loss of 350 jobs because the costs of refitting it were too high. It would have cost as much as C$300 million to install the equipment necessary to allow the 45-year-old plant to produce low-sulfur gasoline and diesel fuel, chief executive Ron Brenneman told analysts. Petro-Canada spokesman Jon Hamilton said costs of refitting refineries vary widely depending on their age, configuration and types of crude oil they run. "It's not a cookie-cutter solution. It's dependent on the refinery and you have look at a technical solution from the resources that you have and the process that you have," Hamilton said. Oakville runs mostly heavy, high-sulfur crude oil, while Imperial's Dartmouth plant, which had most of its modern units installed in the 1970s, uses lighter oil, much of it imported from across the Atlantic, he said. Petro-Canada intends to supply the densely populated Ontario market from an expanded Montreal refinery and with imported petroleum products, Brenneman said. Its other plant is in Edmonton, Alberta. Imperial's Desrochers stressed there was no connection between his firm's Dartmouth announcement and Petro-Canada's decision to close the Oakville refinery. "Nobody should try to put the two together because there's absolutely no relationship," he said. He said Imperial originally planned the announcement in August but postponed it because of the Nova Scotia general election. Meanwhile, Petro-Canada said it was closing 100 retail sites and selling another 25 in Ontario and provinces to the east as part of a industry-wide cull of gas stations that began in the early 1990s. It sold its Newfoundland network earlier this year. Petro-Canada stock slipped 19 Canadian cents to C$55.64 in Toronto. Imperial rose 51 Canadian cents to C$52.19. Exxon Mobil owns 69.6 percent of Toronto-based Imperial. Story by Jeffrey Jones REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for Your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at Myinks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/l.m7sD/LIdGAA/qnsNAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
