By Robert Harvey
LONDON (Reuters) – Portugal’s Galp will be gradually restarting units at its Sines oil refinery over the coming days after the major Iberian power outage on Monday forced it to suspend operations, a spokesperson for the company said.
In addition to Galp’s plant, oil refineries across Spain operated by Repsol, Moeve, and Petronor also announced they were beginning to restart operations on Tuesday after Monday’s blackout brought both countries to a standstill.
Power was restored to the Iberian peninsula by Tuesday, after the worst blackout in the countries’ history, the cause of which remains unclear.
Portugal’s government said on Tuesday that power supplies had been normalised for all 6.4 million electricity clients.
Sines, which has a crude processing capacity of 225,000 barrels per day, is Galp’s only operating oil refinery. It ceased crude oil processing at its smaller refinery at Matosinhos near Porto in 2021.
(Reporting by Robert Harvey; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Joe Bavier)
