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Tamoil light

Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Mar 25 17:37.

From Reuters on Friday:

RTRS – BP SAYS HALTS BUSINESS WITH LIBYAN-CONTROLLED TAMOIL

RTRS- BP SAYS DECLARES FORCE MAJEURE ON ALL TAMOIL CRUDE AND PRODUCT DELIVERIES

FT Alphaville has written before about the risk of Libyan asset freezes hitting one of the country’s best known businesses, downstream operator Tamoil, registered and incorporated in the Netherlands under the Oilinvest name, headquartered in Monaco — but by and large operated and managed out of Switzerland.

What’s more, in Switzerland it’s a pretty big cheese. Its Collombey refinery processes some 15-20 per cent of the oil used in land-locked Switzerland, according to Rolf Hartl of the Swiss Oil Association (via swissinfo.ch).

But as FT Alphaville’s Joseph Cotterill has pointed out, the ambiguity is that Tamoil per se does not come under current sanctions, unlike its owners, such as the Libyan Investment Authority.
Furthermore, while Tamoil obviously used to source crude from Libya, it’s now finding those sources are running dry. So even if it counts itself European and not Libyan, it might still be frozen out of business due to pure logistics and lack of crude supply.

Now, Tamoil says it is doing everything it can to keep operations going despite an erm sudden reduction in the number of willing counteparties it has to deal with.

The latest from Reuters is that talks are proceeding with clients to reassure them about the impact of potential sanctions, and that the worst case scenario would see it bringing forward its maintenance schedule to early April instead of June.

Of course, as Swissinfo.ch points out, any official freezing of Tamoil operations would compromise its position as an asset of the Libyan people. Furthermore, if a freeze was to transpire, it would have to do so across all the European states Tamoil operates in, not just Switzerland.

These include Italy, where it owns petrol station networks and a refinery in Cremona (already shut, according to Bloomberg), as well as Germany, where it owns more petrol station networks and a refinery in Hamburg. There are also company-owned distribution networks in the Netherlands and Spain to consider, too.

The following statistics from Tamoil’s website sum up the scale of assets involved:

For now, though,  retail sites do seem well supplied.

Staff told FT Alphaville at one Tamoil station in Geneva that it was business as usual. Furthermore, they were not aware of any upcoming supply issues in the days or weeks to come:


Related links:
Tamoil refinery in Valais closed, Qaddafi in Rome - Geneva lunch
Tamoil issue fuels debate in Switzerland - SwissInfo

This entry was posted by Izabella Kaminska on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 17:37 and is filed under Uncategorised. Tagged with , , , . Edit this entry.

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