Morocco’s Societe Anonyme Marocaine de l’Industrie du Raffinage (SAMIR) will halt production at its 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) Mohammedia refinery due to financial difficulties, the company said in a statement.
Sources at the refinery said it was already shut down, but would restart once it received delivery of two cargoes of 2 million barrels of crude oil, scheduled to arrive between Aug. 15 and 18.
It said SAMIR will continue to supply oil products until its stocks run out.
A source at the refinery said the facility had already halted production, but that it has full stocks of diesel fuel, the company’s most important and profitable product, and that clients are being supplied from storage.
Stocks of other fuels are low and those are being imported for now, the source added.
The source would not comment on the nature of the financial difficulties, but said the plan is to complete maintenance on crude distillation and vacuum distillation units and a hydrocracker before a restart, likely in the fall.
As Morocco’s only refinery, a permanent closure would make the country entirely reliant on imports for its fuel needs. At just under 300,000 bpd in petroleum consumption, it is Africa’s fifth-largest oil consumer, according to the data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
According to a statement on its website from April, SAMIR had secured financing of close to $600 million earlier this year from international institutions including U.S. private equity giant Carlyle Group and the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation.
The refinery added a new crude distillation unit in 2012.