The Augusta refinery in Italy has commenced its restart operations.

The Algerian state-owned company Sonatrach has started to bring back online units at its 198,000 barrels per day refinery located in Augusta, Sicily, after completing scheduled maintenance.

This refinery has undergone a comprehensive five-year overhaul, the first of its kind since the spring of 2019, which followed its acquisition from ExxonMobil at the end of 2018. Sonatrach gradually began to shut down units in early January-February and is now restarting them in a similar manner. The company announced that operations are currently being resumed. They plan to have several units back online by April 15, including a propane-butane splitter, an LPG Merox unit, a fuels vacuum distillation unit (VDU), a crude distillation unit (CDU), a desulphuriser, a de-waxing unit, and two reformers. The company indicated that there would be flaring and noise during this process.

The last CDU, along with the refinery's catalytic cracker (FCC), propylene splitter, lubricants VDU, and other units are scheduled to be restarted between April 15 and April 30.

Market participants anticipate that the first cargoes of oil products from Augusta will be available around the middle of the month.