Exxon Is Said to Plan Halt of Fawley Gasoline Cracker Next Year

By Nidaa Bakhsh

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to shut a gasoline-making unit at its Fawley oil refinery, the U.K.'s largest, in the fourth quarter of next year, two people with knowledge of the work said.

A so-called fluid catalytic cracker, or FCC, will be halted in October to tie in new pipes, the people said, declining to be identified because the information is confidential. They didn't say how long the shutdown would last.

``It's our practice not to comment on the operational status of our facilities,'' David Eglinton, Exxon's spokesman in the U.K., said in an e-mailed statement.

The catalytic cracker has a capacity of 72,000 barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Other refineries in Europe are scheduled to halt cracker operations in the same quarter, potentially boosting gasoline prices in the region. Petroplus Holdings AG will close an FCC and associated units at its 172,000-barrel-a-day Coryton refinery in the U.K. for maintenance, while Cia. Espanola de Petroleos SA will shut all processing units at its 98,000-barrel-a-day Huelva plant in Spain to install a new crude-distillation facility.

Gasoline in Europe is trading below the price of its crude oil feedstock as the global recession forces consumers to cut spending, curbing demand for the motor fuel.

European gasoline for December loading traded $6.89 a barrel below Brent crude yesterday and was at a discount of $9.43 a barrel for the fourth quarter of 2009, according to broker PVM Oil Associates Ltd. Typically fuels trade above their feedstock to reflect processing costs.

Exxon's Fawley refinery, near Southampton in southern England, can process about 320,000 barrels of oil a day, according to the U.K. Petroleum Industry Association. It supplies 14 percent of Britain's petroleum products, according to Exxon's Web site.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nidaa Bakhsh in London at nbakhsh@bloomberg.net