LONDON (Reuters) - 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."
Despite this, INEOS over the weekend shut down an ethylene unit at the Grangemouth petrochemical site due to an issue caused by cold weather. The spokesman said the unit is still closed as the company worked to resolve the issue, and on Twitter it warned local residents of flaring as a result of the shutdown.