TotalEnergies to overhaul largest European refinery in 2025

TotalEnergies will do extensive turnaround work at its largest integrated refinery complex in Europe in the second half of 2025, sources familiar with the plans told Bloomberg on Friday.

TotalEnergies’s Antwerp refining and petrochemicals platform is the French supermajor’s largest integrated complex in Europe. Located in Antwerp, Belgium, right in the middle of the major oil hub Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam (ARA), the complex has the capacity to process about 340,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil.

The Antwerp refinery has two gasoline-making units, known as fluid catalytic converters. The bigger of these two units will have a new reactor installed during the halt and turnaround between September and December 2025, according to one of Bloomberg’s sources.

Work will also be carried out on furnaces, another source told the newswire.

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Amid weaker-than-expected demand and ample supply, refining margins in Europe and the rest of the world have dropped in recent months, and have dented the profits of the integrated supermajors.

TotalEnergies, alongside Shell and BP, has already warned that weak refining margins would hit third-quarter earnings.

The downstream earnings of TotalEnergies are expected “to sharply decrease given much lower refining margins” in Europe and in the rest of the world, the French oil and gas giant said earlier this week in a preview of its Q3 earnings to be published on October 31.

The European Refining Margin Marker (ERM) – the market indicator for European refining representative of the company’s European refining system – plunged by 65% to $15.4 per ton in the third quarter, compared to $44.9 per ton for the second quarter. For reference, this margin averaged $100.6/t for the third quarter of last year, according to TotalEnergies’s summary of the main indicators.

The refining industry is witnessing the end of the supercycle of huge profits and record margins that began with the post-pandemic surge in demand and the war and sanctions-related supply disruptions.