Grangemouth Oil Refinery Running amid Forties Pipeline Closure

Scotland's 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) Grangemouth oil refinery has enough crude to keep running even as the Forties pipeline that supplies it will be shut for weeks, a spokesman for operator INEOS said on Tuesday.

Oil prices spiked to more than two-year highs on Tuesday after INEOS said the Forties pipeline, which it also operates, will be closed for weeks to repair a hairline fracture.

The pipeline carries about 450,000 bpd of Forties oil to Hound Point on the Scottish coast, where it is either loaded onto tankers, stored in tanks or piped to the 200,000-bpd Grangemouth refinery.

But a spokesman for INEOS said the refinery had "sufficient stocks" of oil to keep running for now, and also "has other sources of crude and can access crude from world markets."


Reporting by Libby George and Ahmad Ghaddar