Margins push global refinery turnabouts 40% lower

The biggest outages will be in Asia but there are stark regional differences

Global refinery turnarounds (TARs) will be almost 40% lower in October compared with a year earlier, as refiners continue to take advantage of cheap crude and healthy margins. This year, TARs-when facilities are taken off line for scheduled maintenance-are expected to peak in October at 5.4m barrels a day, according to Energy Aspects. This is 3.27m b/d lower than in October last year, a drop of 37.7%. The largest scheduled maintenance periods are expected to be in Asia, with around 1.92m b/d of capacity being shut that month-462,000 b/d less than in October 2015. Seasonal maintenance periods usually tighten global petroleum supply as there is less available distillation capacity to pump out