(JNS) Israel’s largest oil refinery, the Bazan Group complex in Haifa, sustained damage from Iranian attacks to conduit piping, requiring it to shut down some facilities, it said on Sunday.
The Bazan Group (formerly Oil Refineries Ltd.), which operates the oil refining and petrochemicals facility near Haifa Port, said only that the piping was hit over the weekend. On Saturday night, a barrage of rockets rocked the Haifa Port area, followed by fires that lit up the cloudy skies east of the port for several hours.
Several people were killed in rocket strikes in Israel on Saturday night, including near Haifa and in Bat Yam and Rehovot farther south. Iran has fired hundreds of ballistic missiles toward Israel since the IDF began attacks on Friday morning to incapacitate Iran’s nuclear program.
In a message to investors, Bazan wrote that “pipelines and transmission lines between facilities in the Bazan complex were hit in a localized manner, with no injuries or casualties. The refining facilities continue to operate, while some of the downstream facilities in the complex have been shut down,” Globes reported.
The maximum daily refining capacity of the Bazan Group’s facilities is approximately 197,000 barrels of crude oil, translating into approximately 9.8 million tons per year, according to Bazan. In practice, Israel produced significantly less oil in 2023 in its refineries in Haifa and Ashdod, totaling 468,376 tons in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.
Israel’s natural gas reserves provide 43% of its energy needs, followed by imported oil (39%) and coal (12%), with the rest coming from renewable sources, according to the agency.
