December 13, 2011 [Bloomberg] - Nynas AB, a Swedish refiner, agreed to buy Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Harburg base-oil plant and associated refining facilities in Hamburg. No price was disclosed.
“The Harburg refinery will continue to produce as today but will over the next 24 months be converted into a stand-alone specialty oil refinery,” Staffan Lennstroem, president of Nynas, said in a statement dated yesterday. A new hydrogen unit will be added on site, he said.
Shell said in January it was in talks to sell the base oil production units and would convert the rest of the refinery into a storage and handling terminal from the second half of next year after failing to find a buyer. The refinery in northern Germany has a processing capacity of 110,000 barrels of crude a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The associated refining facilities include bitumen assets, tank farms and jetties, Nynas said in the statement. Nynas is a venture of Neste Oil Oyj and Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Its production is largely based on heavy crude, which is upgraded to produce bitumen and naphthenic specialty oils.
