Matosinhos refinery to cease operation at end of April – Galp

The Matosinhos refinery is expected to come to a total halt at the end of April, with decommissioning operations starting then and maintaining initial forecasts of an annual saving of 90 million euros with the closure, Galp announced on Monday.

“The unit should totally stop at the end of this month and we will start the decommissioning phase. The decontamination will be later and therefore, from the point of view of cash flow generation, this is a process that will take a long, long time, but without differences compared to the forecast numbers,” said Galp’s chief financial officer (CFO), Filipe Crisóstomo, during a webcast to present the oil company’s first-quarter results.

Last year when the closure of the Matosinhos refinery was announced, cost savings of around 90 to 100 million euros per year were considered and the CFO said that “at this stage there are no indications that the figures will be different.”

He said that this figure includes around 60 million euros in savings in operating costs and 30 million euros in recurring capital expenditure.

Galp announced at the end of last year the concentration of its refining operations at the Sines complex and the discontinuation of operations at the Matosinhos refinery as of 2021.

In a statement sent to the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM), Galp justified the decision with the “structural changes in the consumption patterns of oil products motivated by the regulatory context and the Covid-19 context,” which “originated a significant impact on industrial activities of ‘downstreaming’,” ensuring that “the supply and distribution of fuels in the country will not be impacted by this decision.”