April 10, 2014 [OPIS] - Germany's North-West Oil Pipeline (NWO) company recorded in 2013 a significant fall in oil liquids throughputs at its deep-water terminal Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast as well as a slowdown in onshore pipeline shipments, reflective of weaker refinery runs, the joint venture of several oil majors said in its annual statement.
Oil liquids throughput at its 1,200-meter jetty with four berths dropped 15.3% year on year to 18.2 million mt (above 133,000 bbl), shipped on 233 tankers. The average cargo size was 77,922 mt, though the facility is capable of receiving oil carriers up to 250-260,000 dwt.
The terminal accounted for about one-fifth of the country’s crude oil imports, which declined 3.3% to 90.37 million mt (662 million bbl), based on official data.
“Throughputs in 2013 were lower, owing to the limited technical availability of connected refineries in the first year-half,” said the company, which is co-owned by BP-Rosneft’s Ruhr Oel (33.69%), BP (25.64%), Shell (20.4%) and Dutch Oilinvest’s Holborn Europa refinery (20.27%).
Volumes shipped through the 16.3-million-mt/year NWO onshore crude oil pipeline to refineries in the Rhine-Ruhr region fell about 8.3% to 14.4 million mt (106 million bbl). These included flows to BP’s 95,000-b/d Lingen facility, Ruhr Oel’s 255,000-265,000-b/d Gelsenkirchen refineries (Scholven and Horst) and Shell’s 141,000-b/d Wesseling plant near Cologne, which is part of the Rheinland complex.
Ruhr Oel co-owner Rosneft reported “unscheduled turnarounds” at several refineries last year, among them its Gelsenkirchen plant.
Flows through the NWO-operated 8-million-mt/year North German Oil Pipeline (NDO) to Holborn Europa’s 103,000-b/d refinery in the port of Hamburg softened “slightly,” NWO said, without providing a figure. The NDO pipeline is owned by the refinery.
From the NWO tanker pier, oil is transferred to a 1.6-million-cbm (11 million bbl) tank farm — comprising 26 tanks of about 30,000 cbm each and 9 tanks of 100,000 cbm each — before it is being shipped to end users or caverns at Wilhelmshaven (Ruestringen) and Wittmund (Friedeburg).
These salt caverns, with a combined capacity of around 15 million cbm, are run by Germany’s petroleum stockpiling agency EBV, which keeps a reserve of crude oil and oil products, and by — insolvent — IVG Caverns. Any discharge or offtake from these salt caverns pass through the NWO tanks, for quantity measurement, according to NWO.
There are further storage tanks at Broegbern, Emsland, and at Ochtrup, Westphalia, alongside the NWO pipeline system. BP’s 50,000-cbm Ochtrup tank, operated by NWO, is linked with caverns at Epe, North Rhine Westphalia.
Besides the NWO terminal, Wilhelmshaven’s outer port area also has jetties operated by Dutch Hestya Energy, which turned the site’s former 260,000-b/d refinery into a 1.22-million-cbm crude oil and oil product storage terminal.
