Russia's OAO Lukoil Holdings (LKOH.RS) plans to resume production at its Odessa refinery in Ukraine in April after a three-year modernization program, the company said Wednesday.
The restart would represent the second stage of the company's effort to bring the refinery back online, said a company spokesman based in Moscow. Test production at the plant began in October 2007.
The preliminary start date for operations is Apr. 7, the spokesman said.
The revamped Odessa refinery is expected to have an annual processing capacity of 2.8 million metric tons of crude oil, compared to 1.39 million tons in 2005. During the modernization work, Lukoil rebuilt the plant's atmospheric distillation unit and constructed a new visbreaker unit.
The changes will better equip Lukoil to produce cleaner fuels which comply with the European Union's Euro 3 standard for motor gasoline and Euro 4 diesel, the spokesman said.
High-octane gasoline output at Odessa will increase to 97% from 82% of gasoline output and the plant's Nelson index - a measure of a refinery's complexity - will rise to 4.7 from 3.2, according to the company's Web site.
Oil refining output at Lukoil's refineries in 2008-2009 is expected to increase by 2 million metric tons when the Odessa refinery reaches full capacity, the company said in an October statement.
Lukoil is carrying out an ongoing modernization program across all of its refineries, reflecting an average investment of about $1 billion a year, the spokesman said. At the Norsi refinery in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, the company is building a fluid catalytic cracker unit which is expected to be completed in four years. The plant has an input capacity of 15 million tons a year.