Parkland temporarily shuts down Burnaby refinery in western Canada

By Rahul Paswan and Nia Williams

(Reuters) - Parkland Corp has temporarily shut down processing operations at its 55,000-barrel-per-day Burnaby refinery in British Columbia, Canada, after encountering an issue with a processing unit, the company said on Wednesday.

Parkland expects it will take about four weeks for the refinery to return to normal operations, and plans to increase refined fuel imports into its on-site shipping terminal to fulfill deliveries to customers in the meantime.

Parkland paused some operations at the refinery last week during a blast of extreme cold weather that swept across western Canada and ran into problems during the restart.

"While restarting, we encountered an issue with a processing unit on January 21, 2024. As a result, we paused the restart and the refinery's processing operations remain temporarily shut down," said Alex Coles, vice president and general manager of the refinery, in a statement.

Over the weekend local media reported a strong burning smell across the Vancouver area that was attributed to the refinery, and Parkland spokesperson Simon Scott confirmed the odor was a result of the operational issues.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Luke Davis said the shut down would likely have a C$25 million-C$35 million ($25.88 million) impact on Parkland's first quarter earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.

($1 = 1.3523 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Rahul Paswan in Bengaluru and Nia Williams in British Columbia; Editing by Leslie Adler, Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)